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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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(^ioAc^-^c %4a^^y^>- 



The Divine Authority 

of Paul's Writings. 



BY 



Malcolm MacGregor, D.D 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

henry Mcdonald, d.d. 



• % If any man thinketh himself to be a firo^het, or spir- 
itual, let him take kyiovuledge of the things tvhich I 
-write unto you, that they are the commandment of the 
Lord." PAUL. 



gUtmttH : 

The Foote & Davies Company, 
printers and binders, 

1898. 



1898, 






66 







Copyright, 1898, 
By Malcolm MacGregor, D.D. 



a — 

- 

Z 
Hi 

3 



TO THE MEMORY 



OF 



JOHN A. BROADUS, D.D., LL.D. 

SOMETIME PRESIDENT OF THE SOUTHERN 
BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, 

WHOSE LOFTY CHRISTIAN CHARACTER, RARE ATTAINMENTS IN 
CHRISTIAN LEARNING, AND GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS IN CHRIS- 
TIAN WORK HAVE SHED A LUSTRE OVER CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR- 
SHIP, AND PROVED A STIMULUS TO CHRISTIAN TOIL, AMONG 
THE BRETHREN OF HIS OWN AND OTHER DENOMINATIONS, 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 

IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF HIS INTEREST IN, AND 

APPROVAL OF, ITS PLAN AND SUBSTANCE, AND HIS 

ENCOURAGEMENT TO THE AUTHOR TO 

COMPLETE AND PUBLISH IT. 



PREFACE. 



This work is an attempt to supply, 
in condensed form, what appears to 
be a real and recognized want — a study 
of the claims of Paul to absolute apos- 
tolic authority, and the scope of that 
authority over modern thought and 
life. Though various learned treatises 
have dealt, in a fragmentary way for 
the most part, with different aspects 
of the subject, there appears to be no 
one work which presents the subject 
comprehensively and concisely. The 
writer has aimed at suggestiveness, 
rather than exhaustiveness, of treat- 
ment. In the prosecution of the work, 
he has been encouraged, by not a few 
brethren distinguished for their attain- 
ments and their loyalty to the truth, to 



PREFACE. 



hope that in several respects, and in 
some measure, this little volume may 
prove helpful to the cause of New 
Testament Christianity. For this he is 
truly thankful. It only remains to be 
said that nearly all the Scripture 
quotations in the book are made from 
the Revised Version; and that the few 
other Scripture quotations are made 
from the Authorized Version. 

Malcolm MacGregor. 

Atlanta, April, 1898. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. — Need of the Discussion. — Sure foundation 
necessary to safe superstructure. Chris- 
tianity founded on Old Testament and New 
Testament Scriptures. Large part of New 
Testament written by Paul. Inspiration 
and apostolic authority of Paul vitally im- 
portant. Ancient and modern anti-Paul- 
inism 17 

PART ONE. 

BASAL POSITIONS. 

II. — Nature of the Apostolic Office. — Christ's 
appointment and training of "the twelve" 
for office. Apostles had infallible guidance 
of the Spirit. Their words were his words. 
They were official witnesses of Christ's 
resurrection. Chief organs of divine reve- 
lation in new dispensation. Determiners 
of Christian faith, ethics, and polity. 
Their precepts the statute law, and their 
example the common law, of the churches. 
Divinely attested by gift of inspiration 
and power of miracle-working 27 

7 



8 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

III. — Genuineness of Paul's Apostleship. — All 
"signs of an apostle" present in Paul. 
Had "seen the Lord." Was appointed 
and instructed exclusively by Christ him- 
self. Wrought many mighty miracles and 
had full inspiration. Was "caught up in- 
to Paradise. ' ' Defends his apostleship in 
Galatian and Second Corinthian letters. 
Mutual testimony of Peter and Paul. 
Harmony of Paul and James 51 

IV. — Extraordinary Character of Paul's Apos- 
tolic Mission. — His mission to plant pure 
Christianity in Gentile lands. His great 
qualifications for the work. Special rela- 
tions and adaptations of his apostleship to 

Gentile peoples. 72 

V. — Apostolicity of Paul's Writings. — Writ- 
ing necessary to permanence of apostolic 
teaching. Divine authority and impulse 
to write. Significant groups of Pauline 
Epistles. Letters of Paul apostolic in de- 
sign and force. Paul commands churches, 
prophets, and pastors. Alleged admissions 
of occasional non-inspiration of Paul an- 
swered 82 

PART TWO. 
PRACTICAL BEARINGS. 

VI. — Practical Bearing on Christian History. 
Epistolary correspondence the best source 
of history. Letters of Paul, and "Acts," 
by his companion, the principal data of 
early Christian history 111 

■ 



CONTENTS. g 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

VII. — Practical Bearing on Christian Doctrine. 
Characteristic Pauline doctrines. Ful- 
ness of Paul's teaching. System of Chris- 
tian doctrine established by Paul's writ- 
ings 114 

VIII. — Practical Bearing on Christian Ethics. 
Relations of history, doctrine, and ethics. 
Pauline ethics, wide in range and lofty 
in character. Writings of Paul enlarge 
and confirm Christian ethics 118 

IX. — Practical Bearing on Church Order. — 
Indebted almost exclusively to Paul and his 
companion, Luke, for light on church order. 121 

Section I. Nature of the Church. — 
Church universal and invisible composed 
of aggregate of finally saved. Church local 
a self-governing body of believers. Depar- 
tures from New Testament order. . . . 124 

Section II. Officers of the Church. — 
Apostles and evangelists in relation to the 
work at large. Bishops (pastors) and dea- 
cons the only officers of the local church. 
Functions of pastors and of deacons. Im- 
portance of training for the "business" of 
the diaconate. Ignoring the model. . . 132 

Section III. Position of Woman in the 
Church. — Pauline prohibitions of women's 
speaking in the church. Great positiveness 
and agreement of exegetes on subject. 
Womanly modesty and good taste acqui- 
escing. Answers to objections 143 



TO CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

X. — Practical Bearing on Estimate of Chris- 
tian Attainments. — Professions of high 
attainments and superior light to be tested 
by Paul's writings. Origen. Illuminati. 
Quakerism. Swedenborgianism. Mor- 
monism. Spiritualism. "Christian Sci- 
ence." Christian Consciousness, etc. . 173 

APPENDIX. 
I. — The Five-Linked Chain. — A Study of a 
Group of Pauline Doctrines in Romans 8: 
29, 30 207 

II. — Divine Estimate of Pastoral Office. . . 227 



INTRODUCTION 



Dr. MacGregor has wisely discerned 
the salient position around which 
another battle must be waged for the 
truth as it is in Christ. In Paul's own 
day there were those that resisted his 
message by the denial of his aposto- 
licity. It was a direct, positive and ulti- 
mate assault. If Paul was not an apos- 
tle, there was an end of the authority 
which gave a divine sanction to his 
teaching. This early opposition fur- 
nished the opportunity for the fullest 
assertion and clearest vindication of 
his claim to the extraordinary office to 
which he was called by the personal 
appointment of the Lord Jesus. 

"Old foes with new faces" verifies 



ii 



1 2 INTR OD UCTION. 

itself in that the modern assailants of 
the nineteenth century are as deter- 
mined to minimize the influence of 
Paul as were his antagonists of the 
first century. Hence the present vol- 
ume/ 4 The Divine Authority of Paul's 
Writings." 

The Pauline Epistles, with their con- 
tents, are constantly assailed by all 
sorts of opposers — some formidable 
by their display of learning;, others 
almost contemptible by their show of 
ignorance. At no time has a thorough 
discussion of the whole subject been 
more necessary than in the present. 
The old plea of Romanism, maintain- 
ing- a succession of men in the apos- 
tolic office, has long* ag"o overthrown 
the authority and teaching's of the 
real apostles, and substituted for the 
word of God the traditions of men. 
Many who deem themselves far away 
from the great error of Rome are 
drifting into the same destructive ten- 



INTRODUCTION. 



13 



dency. Every enthusiast who has a 
theory or organization to spring- upon 
the world, for which no support, or 
against which no positive prohibition, 
is found in the Bible, finds it easy to 
make the charge that the writings of 
the New Testament were simply pro- 
visional and temporary. In the times 
of this ignorance, God winked at this 
well-meaning antique delusion, but 
the nineteenth century — this latter 
day of Messiah — has come, and Who 
are the apostles? especially, Who is 
Paul? that we should bow our necks to 
the bondage of the environments of 
that early time. 

The author's selection of his theme 
and manner of discussion is wise 
and timely. With reverence and cour- 
age, with vigor and clearness, he 
restates the fundamental truths in re- 
gard to the apostolic office — the ap- 
pointment of Paul, his authority in 
his extraordinary commission, and the 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

apostolicity of his Epistles. These 
positions are vital. They are sup- 
ported not by fiery denunciations, but 
by calm argument and fair, lucid state- 
ment. You feel that the foundation 
is true and abiding. Paul is still the 
great apostle of the Gentiles, "even as 
our beloved brother Paul also accord- 
ing to the wisdom given unto him hath 
written unto you .... in which are 
some things hard to be understood, 
which they that are unlearned and un- 
stable wrest, as they do also the other 
Scriptures, unto their own destruction. " 

The second part consists in the 
statement and discussion of the prac- 
tical bearings of the basal positions 
which have been so strongly sustained 
in the first five chapters. 

We have only to look at these 
practical bearings to see how far- 
reaching and instructive they are. On 
church history, on Christian doctrine, 
on Christian ethics, on church order 



INTRODUCTION. 



15 



(nature of the church, officers of the 
church, position of woman in the 
church), and on estimate of Christian 
attainments. 

Possibly the discussion of woman's 
position in the church may interest 
more people by reason of the present 
agitation of this subject. All the 
chapters, however, are instructive 
and profitable. While the book is 
specially adapted to the present and 
should be read by thoughtful people 
in all of our churches, I am glad 
to say that to all churches it com- 
mends itself by its breadth of view 
and the nature of the subject, free 
from anything denominationally of- 
fensive. 

It would prove an admirable book 
for a course of study in our young 
people's various societies. 

Dr. MacGregor has done his work 
well. He shows that the pulpit is not 
the only sphere in which he can do 



1 6 INTRODUCTION. 

splendid work. His scholarly culture, 
his profound reverence for the truth 
of God, his lucid terseness of style, 
have enabled him to write a book by 
which he may hope to help the faith 
of the children of God in holding the 
great verities of revealed truth. May 
its circulation be worthy of its merits. 

Henry McDonald. 

Atlanta, April, 1898. 



XLbe Divine Hutboritv. of 
Paul's Writings. 



Chapter I. 

NEED OF THE DISCUSSION. 

Without a sure foundation, no struc- 
ture, whether material, mental, moral, 
or religious, can be safe. The super- 
structure is imperilled quite as much 
by assaults upon the foundation as by 
direct assaults upon itself. To under- 
mine the foundation is to demolish the 
superstructure. 

Genuine Christianity, with its glori- 
ous economy of salvation, with its sub- 
lime facts, doctrines, and ethics ; with its 
significant ordinances, simple but ef- 
fective church organization and polity, 
and vast scheme of work and wor- 
ship, is based exclusively upon the Old 

2 17 



1 8 NEED OF THE DISCUSSION. 

and New Testaments; and, for obvi- 
ous reasons, very specially upon the 
New Testament. It is " built upon 
the foundation of the apostles and 
prophets, Christ Jesus himself being 
the chief corner stone/' Without the 
Scripture there can be no Christianity. 
Unless the authority of Scripture be 
firmly established, Christianity can 
have neither definiteness, power, nor 
stability. 

The divine inspiration and conse- 
quent infallibility of the Sacred Writ- 
ings are, therefore, of vital importance 
to the Christian religion. The abso- 
lute inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures 
is fundamental to their own authority 
and claims, and to our certainty of 
mind in matters of Christian truth and 
duty. The unimpeachable and per- 
fect truth of the Sacred Writings, as 
established by their clearly proved di- 
vine inspiration, together with their 
explicit, implied, and oft-repeated 



NEED OF THE DISCUSSION. 19 

claims, must be held to, immovably, 
as a first principle of genuine Chris- 
tianity, and as a. sine qua non of prog- 
ress and assurance in the knowledge 
of divine things. To this prime and 
impregnable position, all our theories 
of the nature of divine inspiration, 
and of the relations between the divine 
and human elements in the products 
of inspiration, must conform; or we 
must discard theory upon the subject, 
while boldly accepting the revealed 
facts. 

The inspired word is explicit enough 
with regard to its own origin, charac- 
ter, and claims. " The sweet psalmist 
of Israel" said, " The spirit of the Lord 
spake by me, and his word was up- 
on my tongue. ,,a The prophet Jere- 
miah averred, " The Lord said unto 
me, Behold, I have put my words in 
thy mouth. ,,b Inspired wisdom has 
declared, u Every word of God is 

a 2 Sam. 23: 2. t>Jer. 1:9. 



20 NEED OF THE DISCUSSION. 

pure." a In one form or another, the 
Apostle Paul has asserted substantially 
that "All Scripture is given by inspi- 
ration of God." b The Apostle Peter 
has told us concerning- inspiration, 
that "Men spake from God, being 
moved by the Holy Ghost. " c The Sa- 
viour himself has said, that the " word 
is truth," and that "the Scripture can- 
not be broken." d On the divine ori- 
gin, absolute inerrancy, and supreme 
authority of the Holy Scriptures, 
these and kindred testimonies are in- 
disputable and final. 

A very large and exceedingly im- 
portant portion of the New Testa- 
ment was written by the Apostle Paul. 
More than one-fourth of the bulk, and 
about one-half of the books, of the 
New Testament, were written by him. 
It is significant also that more than 
one-half of the sacred writing known 

a Prov. 30: 5. b 2 Tim. 3: 16. c 2 Peter 1: 21. 

d John 10: 35. 



NEED OF THE DISCUSSION. 2 \ 

to us as " The Acts" of the Apostles 
is simply a record of the sayings, do- 
ings, and experiences of Paul, as the 
Lord's great apostle to the Gentiles. 
While no portion of either the New 
Testament or of the Old has been ex- 
empt from the assaults of infidel and 
semi-infidel critics, it is both strange 
and ominous that there should ap- 
pear in various quarters, in current 
times, a disposition on the part of 
many who are not confessedly scep- 
tical, but who claim to be essentially, 
or even eminently, Christian, to speak 
slightingly and even sneeringly of the 
Apostle Paul and his Epistles, and to 
act in disregard, or in defiance of him 
and of them. Most of these anoma- 
lous Christians fail to realize the dis- 
loyalty and lawlessness of their con- 
duct; and were they once clearly to 
discern the true nature and actual 
tendency of their course, they would 
recoil from it as convulsively as 



22 NEED OF THE DISCUSSION. 

they would from downright infidelity. 
This class of dissentients not only ad- 
mit, but maintain, in general terms 
the divine inspiration and authority 
of all the Sacred Writings, and their 
difficulty with Paul is simply their in- 
herited or acquired dislike for certain 
of his teachings and injunctions, the 
force of which they are struggling 
with great inconsistency to evade, or 
the meaning of which, on account of 
preconceived notions, they endeavor 
to modify, or explain away. But 
their course in this matter is perilous 
to their own Christian faith and loy- 
alty, and, through the contagiousness 
of their example, perilous to the 
Christian faith and loyalty of others. 
But there is another class of anti- 
Pauline dissentients, fewer, indeed, in 
number, but more adroit and malig- 
nant in their hostility, some of them 
in influential positions, who see clearly 
enough that their rejection of either 



NEED OF THE DISCUSSION. 



23 



much or little of Paul's teachings and 
injunctions can be justified only by 
partial or complete disestablishment 
of the divine inspiration and apostolic 
authority of the great apostle; and 
these fundamental claims, they do 
not hesitate, covertly or openly, to 
disparage and impugn. Preposses- 
sions of rationalistic philosophy, the 
blinding influence of unscriptural cus- 
toms, and the warping force of adven- 
turous love of novelty, overweening 
self-conceit, and headstrong self-will 
account very fully for most of this 
dangerous anti-Pauline drift. 

In the apostle's own day, chiefly in 
the church of Corinth and in the 
churches of Galatia, there were those 
who had the gracelessness and the 
temerity to question and belittle Paul's 
apostolic authority in the face of 
overwhelming proofs; but manifestly 
from the record they were the most 
unspiritual, pretentious, ambitious, de- 



24 NEED OF THE DISCUSSION. 

signing, contentious, unscrupulous, 
and troublesome among all who at 
that time professed the Christian faith; 
and their course was vehemently re- 
pudiated by the better quality and 
great majority in the Christian com- 
munities. 

These presumptuous and arrogant 
despisers of Paul's divinely consti- 
tuted authority and mission made great 
boasts of their prophetic and spiritual 
gifts and attainments. For the sake 
of the gospel truths and institutions 
intrusted to him, Paul overcame the 
natural modesty of his disposition, 
and, in his Corinthian and Galatian 
letters, powerfully asserted and de- 
fended his independent, divinely be- 
stowed apostleship; and we should be 
profoundly thankful for the vast 
amount of invaluable information con- 
cerning Paul's apostleship thus provi- 
dentially furnished to the world. In the 
counsels of God, these men doubted 



NEED OF THE DISCUSSION. 



25 



that we might be assured. The say- 
ing- of Paul which constitutes the pith 
and the motto of this little work is a 
crucial test of, and a crushing retort 
to, these would-be great ones — these 
self-seeking and presumptuous im- 
pugners of high apostolic authority: 
"If any man thinketh himself to be a 
prophet, or spiritual, let him take 
knowledge of the things which I write 
unto you, that they are the command- 
ment of the Lord." a This test would 
prove the genuineness or the spurious- 
ness of their much-boasted prophetic 
and spiritual gifts. 

The things which the apostle wrote, 
referred to in this passage, are not 
merely those things contained in the 
immediate context; but they include 
all the rich and varied themes so fruit- 
fully treated throughout this great 
Epistle and all the contents of all his 
Epistles. 

a 1 Cor. 14: 37. 



26 NEED OF THE DISCUSSION. 

In view of the ancient, and espe- 
cially of the modern, anti-Pauline hos- 
tility, it will be well to examine the 
grounds on which we hold the divine 
authority of Paul's writing's. For "if 
the foundations be destroyed, what 
shall the righteous do?" If one of the 
main supports of our Christian faith 
be weakened or removed, on what can 
it be based instead? We shall find, 
however, that the divine authority of 
Paul's writings rests ultimately and 
securely on four massive, closely re- 
lated, and impregnable basal truths 
— the nature of the apostolic office, 
the genuineness of Paul's apostleship, 
the extraordinary character of Paul's 
apostolic mission, and the apostolicity 
of Paul's writings. 



PART ONE. 

BASAL POSITIONS. 



Chapter II. 

THE NATURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 

The term "apostle" primarily signi- 
fies "one sent;" but even in the Old 
Testament, the term "sent" came to 
mean, in certain well-defined cases — 
as in the commissioning of Moses and 
Isaiah, "the sent of God" — the sent of 
God on a special mission, with special 
powers, to speak and write and act for 
God, with fullness of divine authority. 
The term "apostle" is used several 
times in the New Testament in a non- 
technical sense, as in the case of Bar- 
nabas. In a pre-eminent way, Christ 
himself is called in the Epistle to the 

27 



28 NATURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 

Hebrews, "the Apostle .... of our 
profession." 

Early in his public ministry — in its 
first year, in fact — Christ chose the 
term to designate the holder of an ex- 
traordinary and all-important office, 
which he was about to institute among 
his disciples. 

In some sort of parallelism with the 
"twelve princes" and "seventy elders" 
divinely appointed for the guidance 
and government of ancient Israel, 
Christ chose his "twelve apostles," 
and, about a year afterwards, "seventy 
others," of subordinate and unnamed 
office, to aid him in accomplishing 
his work among the Jewish people. 
Of all the evangelists, Luke alone, 
and only in one brief passage in his 
Gospel, a tells us anything of " the 
seventy;" and they are never again re- 
ferred to in the New Testament. 

The work of "the seventy" was con- 

a Luke 10: 1-20. 



NA TURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 2 g 

fined, for the most part, if not alto- 
gether, to the last year of our Lord's 
personal ministry on earth before his 
crucifixion; and it was apparently de- 
signed to facilitate the completion of 
Christ's prophetic work, his work as 
preacher and teacher, before his rap- 
idly approaching departure through 
his atoning death. When the Lord 
appointed "the seventy," he "sent 
them two and two before his face into 
every city and place, whither he him- 
self was about to come." a 

Of the Saviour's appointment of his 
twelve apostles, and of their work pre- 
vious to his death, the account of 
Mark is as follows: "And he ap- 
pointed twelve, that they might be with 
him, and that he might send them forth 
to preach, and to have authority to cast 
out devils." b But the most character- 
istic, and by far the most important, 
part of the work of the apostles was 

a Luke 10: i. b Mark 3: 14, 15. 



30 



NATURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 



to be done after Christ's resurrection 
and ascension. The preparation of 
these twelve chosen men, by a special 
course of instruction and training, un- 
der himself personally, to be followed 
by extraordinary gifts and infallible 
guidance of the Holy Spirit, for the 
higher duties of their office, may be 
said to have been the chief, the central 
work of Christ's earthly ministry, con- 
sidered apart from his work of atone- 
ment. Christ's preparation of "the 
twelve" was the training of teachers, 
leaders, and rulers. His training of 
them was not primarily a training for 
ideal saintship and seraphic personal 
holiness; but a training for office, for 
the peculiar and special work of apos- 
tleship, by which Christianity was to 
be fully formed, formulated, extended, 
and made permanent. 

Christ selected these twelve men 
from among his followers, and set 
them apart, that they might be with 



NA TURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 3 1 

him constantly, as heart-sympathizers 
with him in his temptations and trials, 
as ear-witnesses of his public dis- 
courses and private instructions, and 
as eye-witnesses of his majesty, of his 
mighty works, and, above all, of the 
crowning and most convincing" mir- 
acle of his career — his resurrection 
from the dead — in order that, by these 
and other means, they might be spe- 
cially prepared to act as his witnesses, 
spokesmen, and vicegerents, after his 
departure from the world. 

After the ascension of Christ and 
the descent of the Spirit, the apostles 
were invested with several new and 
transcendently important functions. 

In the first place, they were divinely 
required, through all their subsequent 
lives, to act as official and respon- 
sible witnesses of Christ's resurrection. 
11 Ye are witnesses of those things," a 
said Christ to them. "We are his 

a Luke 24: 48. 



32 NA TURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 

witnesses of these things," a said the 
apostles to their hearers. It is written, 
also, that, " with great power gave the 
apostles witness of the resurrection of 
the Lord Jesus." b 

Christianity was fact before it was 
doctrine; and it is doctrine before it 
becomes life. Considered as history, 
as doctrine, as ethics, and as salvation, 
Christianity rests mainly on the resur- 
rection of Christ. All is secure if that 
is proved; if that is disproved all fails. 
Hence the divine appointment of the 
apostles as special witnesses of this 
basal fact ; and hence the overwhelming 
proofs they constantly furnished of 
that supreme event, and the great stress 
they laid upon it. Christ's resurrec- 
tion, besides certifying a future life, 
proved Christ's divinity ; c and his entire 
system of doctrine and ethics, whether 
personally or apostolically uttered; at- 
tested the genuineness, completeness, 

a Acts 5: 32. b Acts 4: 33. c Cf. Rom. 1: 4 



NATURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFT ICE. 



33 



and efficacy of his atoning sacrifice; 
proclaimed his power to save; and 
warranted and invited the confidence 
of mankind in him as the Divine Re- 
deemer. 

Again, the apostles w r ere constituted 
the chief , the supreme, organs of divine 
revelation in the new dispensation. 
As Christ's declaration that "the Scrip- 
ture cannot be broken" assures us of 
the divine inspiration and infallible 
truth of the Scriptures of the Old 
Testament ; so his promise of the trans- 
cendent aid and direction of the Holy 
Spirit to the apostles, to the effect 
that their utterances would be, not 
their words, but the words of God, as- 
sures us of the divine inspiration and 
infallible truth of the Scriptures of the 
New Testament. 

Assuming the virtual, if not the ac- 
tual, Pauline authorship of Hebrews, 
then with the scarcely more than seem- 
ing exceptions of Mark and Luke,who 

' 3 



34 NA TURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 

were apostolically endorsed compan- 
ions and helpers of Peter and Paul re- 
spectively, and with the merely minor 
exceptions of James and Jude, the 
Apostles, Matthew, Peter, John, and 
Paul, were the writers of the New 
Testament. Through the revelation of 
Christ and the inspiration of the Spirit, 
the apostles determined the doctrines, 
the ethics, and the institutions of 
Christianity. In common with many 
other persons in the apostolic churches, 
who, as we are informed in the Acts 
and the Epistles, possessed prophetic 
gifts, Mark, Luke, James, and Jude 
must have exercised the prophetic 
function, at least in the form of in- 
spiration, whether in the form of rev- 
elation or not. But the apostolic of- 
fice, while it included the prophetic 
function in all its forms, was superior 
to, and authoritative over, that of the 
New Testament prophets, and, there- 
fore,over the ordinary office of pastors 



NA TURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 3 5 

and teachers and every other office 
whatsoever. All this is plainly indi- 
cated by Paul's statement, "God hath 
set some in the church, first apostles, 
secondly prophets," a and by Paul's 
exercise of authority over prophets, in 
restricting" their utterances to the re- 
quirements of order: "Let the prophets 
speak by two or three, and let the 
others discern. But if a revelation be 
made to another sitting* by, let the first 
keep silence ;" b and it is indicated 
more positively still by Paul's making 
the divine authority of his writings a 
test of the genuineness of claims to 
the gift of prophecy and other spirit- 
ual gifts: "If any man thinketh him- 
self to be a prophet, or spiritual, let 
him take knowledge of the things 
which I write unto you, that they are 
the commandment of the Lord." c 

The apostles, acting for Christ and 
by his authority, were the supreme de- 

a 1 Cor. 12: 28. & 1 Cor. 14: 29, 30. c 1 Cor. 14: 37. 



36 NA TURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 

terminers of what should be taught 
and believed and done in the churches 
of Christ. They were the qualified 
and responsible agents and supervis- 
ors for Christ, in every department of 
church activity. The expressed or 
implied sanction or imprimatur of any 
of them would at once determine the 
canonicity of any writing-. Each of 
them equally, and not Peter alone, 
had the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; 
and whatever any of them bound or 
loosed on earth was accordingly 
bound or loosed in heaven. They 
were the authorized representatives, 
ambassadors, spokesmen, scribes, vice- 
gerents, legislators, and judges for 
Christ in his church on earth; so that 
whatever they said, or did — not, in- 
deed, in their personal and private ca- 
pacity, but in their official capacity — 
was the veritable word and deed of 
Christ speaking and acting through 
them. 



NATURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 



37 



Special promises of extraordinary 
supernatural aid, in the discharge of 
their apostolic functions, were re- 
peatedly made to them by Christ. On 
four separate and special occasions — 
first, when at the outset of their min- 
istry, Christ commissioned the apos- 
tles to preach the kingdom of God; 
again, when Christ himself preached 
his gospel to a vast concourse of peo- 
ple; yet again, when he pronounced 
judgment upon Jerusalem and the 
Jewish nation; and once more, in his 
valedictory discourse — the Saviour 
made these wonderful promises of di- 
vine aid. " But when they deliver you 
up, be not anxious how or what ye 
shall speak: for it shall be given you 
in that hour what ye shall speak. For 
it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit 
of your Father that speaketh in you." a 
"The gospel must first be preached 
unto all the nations. And when they 

a Matt. 10: 19, 20. 



33 



NATURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE 



lead you to judgment and deliver 
you up, be not anxious beforehand 
what ye shall speak: but whatsoever 
shall be given you in that hour, that 
speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, 
but the Holy Ghost." a " Settle it 
therefore in your hearts, not to medi- 
tate beforehand how to answer: for I 
will give you a mouth and wisdom, 
which all your adversaries shall not be 
able to withstand or to gainsay." b "I 
have yet many things to say unto you, 
but ye cannot bear them now. How- 
beit when he, the Spirit of truth, is 
come, he shall guide you into all the 
truth: for he shall not speak from him- 
self; but what things soever he shall 
hear, these shall he speak: and he shall 
declare unto you the things that are 
to come, He shall glorify me: for he 
shall take of mine, and shall declare it 
unto you. ,,c 

It would be inconceivable that the 

a Mark 13: 10, 11. b Luke 21: 14, 15. c John 16: 12-14. 



NATURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 



39 



divine aid thus promised on these 
occasions to the apostles should be 
vouchsafed when they spoke, and not, 
as some have ventured to allege, when 
they wrote; that it should be granted 
them when they spoke to a few per- 
sons, and withheld from them when 
they wrote concerning the great facts, 
doctrines, duties, privileges, and hopes 
of the gospel and kingdom of Christ, 
for all mankind, and for all time. But 
as a matter of fact, the apostles claim 
absolute and divine authority for 
their official words whether written or 
spoken. Thus Peter speaks of the 
apostolic letters, as well as of the apos- 
tolic oral utterances, as "the com- 
mandment of the Lord and Saviour 
through your apostles ;' ,a and thus 
Paul declares, "the things that I write 
unto you are the command- 
ment of the Lord." b Thus also Paul 
exhorts the Thessalonians, " So then, 

a 2 Pet. 3: 2. *> 1 Cor. 14: 37. 



40 



NATURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 



brethren, stand fast, and hold the tra- 
ditions which ye were taught, whether 
by word, or by epistle of ours." a Ab- 
solute subordination to Christ who re- 
vealed his truth and will to them, and 
absolute authority over Christ's peo- 
ple for whose instruction and govern- 
ment Christ qualified and appointed 
them, were the fundamental charac- 
teristics of apostleship. 

Further, the apostles were the au- 
thorized agents of Christ in founding, 
organizing, working, and governing 
the churches according to his will, as 
he supernaturally revealed it to them, 
and supernaturally aided them in car- 
rying it out. On the very day on 
which the promised Spirit of God de- 
scended upon, and took full posses- 
sion of, the apostles, completing their 
supernatural qualifications and seal- 
ing their divine authority, they began 
the organization of the first Christian 

a 2 Thess. 2: 15. 



NATURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 



41 



church. The pattern which they thus 
set and the principles which they thus 
exhibited were to be the rule for the 
founding", working*, and governing- of 
all churches till the end of time. As 
the Book of Acts clearly implies, what 
the apostles said and did, in their of- 
ficial capacity, and, therefore, under 
the power of the Holy Ghost, was 
really what Christ continued "to do 
and to teach'' after his ascension to 
the right hand of power. 

All secular laws may be classified 
as common law, or statutory law; the 
former constituted by immemorial 
custom and the decisions of the courts, 
the latter by the acts of legislative 
bodies. Similarly, the divinely in- 
spired examples and the divinely in- 
spired precepts of the apostles, who 
alone were the lawmakers of Chris- 
tianity, constitute respectively, the 
common law and the statute law of 
Christian life, and of the churches of 



42 NA TURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 

Christ; and each form of the revealed 
will of Christ is as binding- as the 
other. Apostolic patterns and apos- 
tolic commands are of equal and of 
absolute authority. Thus the inspired 
example of the apostles, in holding" the 
meetings of the churches for Christian 
worship and service, and for commem- 
oration of the resurrection of Christ, 
on the first day of the week, rather 
than on the seventh, is as strong 
authority for the observance of ''the 
Lord's Day" as the sacred day, as 
could be furnished by an inspired 
precept. 

In the work of inspiration, the Di- 
vine Spirit had full and absolute mas- 
tery of all the faculties of the apostles 
and other inspired penmen; yet he 
worked in and through each of them 
in accordance with their particular na- 
tures and without destroying or ignor- 
ing their individuality. As a master 
musician will preserve the individual- 



NATURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 



43 



ity of the various instruments on which 
he plays, while displaying" fully his 
own individuality and genius in his 
use of each of them, and in combin- 
ing them all harmoniously, as in an or- 
chestra; so the inspiring Spirit, while 
preserving the individuality of each 
Scripture writer — the violoncello 
strains of Matthew, the stirring tabor 
beat of Mark, the peaceful flute notes 
of Luke, the trumpet peal of Peter, 
the clarion ring; of James, the bugle 
tones of Jude, the violin and harp mu- 
sic of John, and the full organ diapa- 
son of Paul — exhibits his own domi- 
nant divine individuality, in each of 
them, and in producing the full har- 
mony of the entire orchestra of inspi- 
ration. 

Should it be asked, as it sometimes 
is, " How could God secure infallible 
presentation of his truth, while breath- 
ing it through the souls of fallible 
men?" it may be answered that he 



44 



NATURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE 



who brings being* out of nothingness, 
light out of darkness, life out of death, 
order out of confusion, good out of 
evil, and who formed the sinless hu- 
man nature of Christ out of the sinful 
nature of the virgin, could as readily 
secure the perfect presentation of his 
truth through minds that he prepared, 
sublimed, took possession of, and infal- 
libly moved, directed, and controlled 
for that very purpose. Left to them- 
selves, in their private personal capaci- 
ties, these men must needs be fallible 
enough ; but when grasped, permeated, 
inspired, moved, and managed by the 
infallible Spirit of God, they must 
needs be as infallible as himself. 

It was necessary to the apostolic of- 
fice, that the recipient of it should have 
" seen the Lord;" that he should be 
able to bear personal witness to the 
resurrection of Christ; that he should 
have received his apostolic commis- 
sion from Christ himself, personally; 



NA TURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 45 

and that he should be able to exhibit 
the " signs of an apostle/' in the exer- 
cise of supernatural gifts and powers, 
attesting" his apostolic appointment, 
message, and mission. Thus, from 
the very nature of the case, the apos- 
tolic office, like the Melchizedek order 
of priesthood, was unique, and with- 
out succession. It could neither be 
evolved out of, nor be merged into, 
another office. In view of this, how 
presumptuous, absurd, and vain are 
the pretensions of those who claim to 
be officially the successors of the apos- 
tles, as if there could be any other 
real and true apostolic succession than 
that of keeping the apostolic doctrines, 
ordinances, and precepts as "once for 
air 5 ' they were delivered ! The apos- 
tles had, and could have, officially, 
neither predecessors, nor successors; 
neither equals, nor substitutes. The 
duration of the apostolic office was, 
in fact, somewhat less than a full or- 



46 NA TURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 

dinary lifetime —from Christ's ap- 
pointment of the apostolate, A. D. 31, 
till the death of John under Trajan, 
A. D. 100, a period of sixty-nine years. 
The apostolic office was furnished 
with adequate divine sanctions and 
endowments for the due attestation of 
its genuineness, and for the full exer- 
cise of vitally important functions. In 
accordance with the promise of Christ, 
as we have already seen, the apostles 
had complete divine revelation and 
inspiration — the former, a supernat- 
ural communication of knowledge to 
them; the latter, a supernatural com- 
munication of either natural or super- 
natural knowledge through them to 
others — whereby they became, in their 
official capacity, through Christ and 
his Spirit, infallible organs of divine 
thought and will. They were, also, 
divinely invested with miraculous 
powers of the most remarkable char- 
acter, to prove the truth, the divine 



NATURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 



47 



origin, and divine approval of their 
message and their mission. " Many 
wonders and signs were done by the 
apostles ;" a "God also bearing* witness 
with them, both by signs and won- 
ders, and by manifold powers, and by 
gifts of the Holy Ghost, according* to 
his own will." b In attestation of their 
apostleship and of the truth of their 
message, they had the power to work 
miracles of great variety, marvelous- 
ness, and significance; and when oc- 
casion required, they had the power 
to enable other persons, on whom 
they laid their hands, to work miracles 
also; though the ability to impart mi- 
raculous powers to others they re- 
served exclusively for themselves. It 
was only through the laying on of the 
apostles' hands that the Holy Ghost 
was given. Thus it would appear, 
from the nature of the case, that the 
miracles of the Christian dispensation 

a Acts 2: 43. b Heb. 2: 4. 



48 NA TURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 

must have been confined to the apos- 
tolic age — at most to the lifetime of 
those Christian survivors of the apos- 
tles, on whom the apostles had laid 
their supernaturally gifted hands — 
which accords with the divine proce- 
dure under the old dispensation, in 
limiting miracles, for the most part, 
to the confirmation of newly delivered 
prophecies, or other authoritative ex- 
pressions of the divine mind and will. 
Great as he was, in character and in 
mission, John the Baptist, the fore- 
runner of Christ, wrought no mir- 
acle;** perhaps, in order that the wide 
distinction between Christ and himself 
might be more readily perceived, and, 
most probably, also because the chief 
work of John the Baptist was, not 
to announce essentially new truth, but 
to collect, condense, and focalize the 
Messianic promises and predictions, 
in "the law and the prophets" which 

a John 10: 41^ 



NATURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 



49 



had already been supernaturally at- 
tested; to announce their speedy ful- 
fillment and the near approach of the 
Messiah; and to summon the people 
to prepare therefor, by genuine re- 
pentance. But Christ and his apos- 
tles, having* important new truth to 
declare and an entirely new order of 
things to establish, freely employed 
miracles of great variety and power, 
to attest the truth of their claims and 
the divineness of their mission. It is 
to be observed in this connection, that, 
in one particular, miracles are like cre- 
ative acts. Both are for the begin- 
nings of things — the latter in the 
kingdom of nature, the former in the 
kingdom of grace. 

The apostles were divinely furnished 
with supernatural wisdom, to enable 
them infallibly to detect hypocrisy, 
treachery, lying, simony, and similar 
evils, lurking in the bosoms of spuri- 
ous professors of the new faith; and 



jo NA TURE OF THE APOSTOLIC OFFICE. 

they were invested with divine au- 
thority to pronounce and execute sum- 
mary judgment upon desperate trans- 
gressors, as in the case of Peter a 
declaring and carrying out the judg- 
ment of the Lord upon Ananias and 
Sapphira, and as in a similar instance 
in the ministry of Paul. b 

In view of the nature of the apos- 
tolic office, as essentially a duly certi- 
fied organ of divine utterance and 
action, the spoken or written words 
of an apostle must be regarded as of 
absolutely divine authority. 

a Acts 5: i-ii. b Acts 13: 9-1 1. 



Chapter III. 

THE GENUINENESS OF PAUL'S APOSTLESHIP. 

All the qualifications and " signs of 
an apostle" were abundantly present 
in Paul. It is true, he had not been 
the companion and pupil of Christ 
during; his earthly ministry, as were the 
other — "the twelve" — apostles. Their 
special mission to the Jewish people, 
particularly those of Palestine, among 
whom, exclusively, Christ had lived 
and ministered, made it necessary 
that they should have been thus privi- 
leged. So when it became needful 
for them to ascertain the divine choice 
and appointment of a disciple to take 
the apostleship rendered vacant by 
the sin and doom of Judas, Peter, the 
readiest of the eleven, said, "Of the 
men, therefore, which have companied 

51 



52 



GENUINENESS OF PAUL S APOSTLESHIP. 



with us all the time that the Lord Je- 
sus went in and went out among; us, 
beginning- from the baptism of John, 
unto the day that he was received up 
from us, of these must one become a 
witness with us of his resurrection." a 
After prayer and the casting of lots, 
" Matthias was numbered with the 
eleven apostles," "to take the place in 
this ministry and apostleship from 
which Judas fell away." b 

The Pentecostal outpouring of the 
Spirit not having as yet occurred, it 
was necessary for them to resort to 
this device divinely sanctioned by the 
Levitical law in particular cases, to 
obtain a clear expression of divine 
appointment of a new apostle, and on 
the other hand, it was necessary that 
the new apostle among the twelve 
should be divinely appointed before 
the Pentecostal descent of the Spirit 
that he might share in common with 

a Acts i: 2i, 22. b Acts i: 25, 26. 



GENUINENESS OF PAUL'S APOSTLESHIP. 



53 



the rest of the twelve, in the extraordi- 
nary gifts and blessings of that mo- 
mentous day. The coming of the en- 
lightening, inspiring Spirit made it 
unnecessary for them ever again to re- 
sort to that or any similar expedient; 
and his coming revealed no error in 
their single use of it, but confirmed it, 
and certified the divine action in the 
premises in response to their call. 

But while it was necessary, for the 
reason already indicated, that each of 
the twelve apostles should have been 
a constant companion of our Lord, 
virtually from his baptism to his as- 
cension, it was not necessary that Paul, 
whose mission was to be to peoples 
among whom Christ had never lived, 
should have been thus circumstanced. 
Yet, even in Paul's case, though he 
was not of the twelve, but held an 
independent apostleship, personal ac- 
quaintance with Christ was necessary. a 

a i Cor. 15: 8. 1 Cor. 9: 1. Acts 22: 14, 15. 



54 GENUINENESS OF PAUL'S APOSTLESHIP. 

So we find that he had a full equiva- 
lent for acquaintance with Christ in 
his earthly life. He had "seen the 
Lord," not merely after his resurrec- 
tion, but after his ascension. The 
risen and ascended Christ made a 
special revelation of himself to Paul- 
While all the other apostles, and more 
than five hundred private Christians, 
saw Christ after his resurrection and 
before his ascension, only Stephen, the 
first martyr, and John, the last of the 
apostles, besides Paul, the great apos- 
tle to the Gentiles, so far as can be 
learned from the record, were favored 
with post-ascension epiphanies of our 
Lord. But from the heavenly glory, 
Paul had numerous "visions and reve- 
lations of the Lord." It was by a 
personal appearance of the glorified 
Christ, that Paul was converted, ap- 
pointed to apostleship, and instructed 
and equipped for his work. It was by 
special, supernatural revelations of 



GENUINENESS OF PAULS APOSTLESHIP. 



55 



Christ from heaven to him, and not 
otherwise, that Paul was effectually 
instructed in the entire system of 
Christianity, which he was called to 
teach and establish. In this extraor- 
dinary way, Paul became versed not 
only in the facts, doctrines, ethics, 
and institutions of the gospel, but 
also in the distinctive characteristics 
and mutual relations of the old and 
new dispensations, and in the practi- 
cal bearing's of the gospel to both 
Gentiles and Jews. The revelation thus 
made directly by Christ to Paul was 
full and final, and it needed not to be 
supplemented from any earthly source 
or supervised by any earthly author- 
ity. Paul solemnly asserts that he re- 
ceived his gospel neither from other 
apostles, nor from private Christians, 
nor from any man or men whatso- 
ever; and declares that he is " an apos- 
tle (not from man, neither through 
man, but through Jesus Christ and 



56 GENUINENESS OF PAUL'S APOSTLESHIP. 

God the Father, who raised him from 
the dead. )" a Again he asseverates, 
11 For I make known to you, brethren, 
as touching the gospel which was 
preached by me, that it is not after 
man. For neither did I receive it from 
man, nor was I taught it, but it came 
to me through the revelation of Jesus 
Christ" b Further he avers, "By rev- 
elation was made known unto me the 
mystery .... which in other genera- 
tions was not made known unto the 
sons of men, as it hath now been re- 
vealed unto his holy apostles and 
prophets in the Spirit; to wit, that the 
Gentiles are fellow-heirs and fellow- 
members of the body and fellow-par- 
takers of the promise in Christ Jesus 
through the gospel. ,,c Not only did 
Paul receive the entire gospel exclu- 
sively from the ascended Christ him- 
self personally, but the very terms in 
which, by divine inspiration, he ex- 

a Gal. i: i. *> Gal. i: n, 12. c Eph. 3: 3, 5, 6. 



GENUINENESS OF PAULS APOSTLESHIP. 



57 



pressed it, he knew to be " the word of 
God," as he emphatically declares in 
what is generally acknowledged to be 
the first written of all his Epistles: 
"And for this cause we also thank 
God without ceasing, that, when ye 
received from us the word of the mes- 
sage, even the word of God, ye ac- 
cepted it not as the word of men, but, 
as it is in truth, the word of God." a 

It is in view of his absolute certainty 
of the divine source from which, and 
the infallible way in which, he received 
the gospel, and in view of the efficient 
manner in which, through the Holy 
Spirit, he made it known, and gave it 
miraculous certification, that he so 
sternly anathematizes those Judaiz- 
ing teachers, who would "pervert the 
gospel of Christ," as received and de- 
livered by him: "Though we, or an 
angel from heaven, should preach un- 
to you any gospel other than that 

a i Thess. 2: 13. 



58 



GENUINENESS OF PAl^ S APOSTLESHIP 



which we preached unto you, let him 
be anathema. As we have said be- 
fore, so say I now again, If any man 
preacheth unto you any gospel other 
than that which ye received let him be 
anathema." a 

As soon as he was commissioned 
and instructed by revelation of the 
glorified Christ, he set about his apos- 
tolic work at once, without consulting 
the other apostles, or any of them. 
On this point, he says distinctly, " But 
when it was the good pleasure of God, 
who separated me from my mother's 
womb, and called me through his 
grace, to reveal his Son in me, that 
I might preach him among the Gen- 
tiles; immediately I conferred not 
with flesh and blood: neither went I 
up to Jerusalem to them which were 
apostles before me: but I went into 
Arabia; and again I returned unto 
Damascus. Then after three years I 

a Gal. i: 8, 9. 



GENUINENESS OF PAUL S APOSTLESHIP. 



59 



went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas 
and tarried with him fifteen days. 
But other of the apostles saw I none, 
save James the Lord's brother." a It 
would be at this time, three years after 
his conversion, that there occurred 
the interesting incident in the early 
Christian life of Paul, which is thus re- 
lated by Luke: "And when he come 
to Jerusalem and assayed to join him- 
self to the disciples and they were 
afraid of him, not believing that he 
was a disciple. But Barnabas took 
him and brought him to the apostles 
[Peter and James], and declared unto 
them how he had seen the Lord in the 
way, and that he had spoken to him, 
and how at Damascus he had preached 
boldly in the name of Jesus." b 

As we learn from the Epistle to the 
Galatians, Paul was three years in 
actual and active apostleship before 
he saw any of the other apostles; that 

a Gal. i: 15-19. & Acts 9: 26, 27. 



60 GENUINENESS OF PAUL'S APOSTLESHIP. 

even then he had only one short inter- 
view with Peter and James; and that, 
for a long period afterwards, he "was 
still unknown by face unto the churches 
of Judea." a 

In the same letter, he says, further, 
that " fourteen years after" this brief 
visit, "I went up again to Jerusalem," 
"by revelation;' 5 "and I laid before 
them the gospel which I preach among 
the Gentiles." b "But from those who 

were reputed to be somewhat 

they, I say, who were of repute im- 
parted nothing to me; but contrari- 
wise, when they saw that I had been 
intrusted with the gospel of the uncir- 
cumcision, even as Peter with the 
gospel of the circumcision (for he that 
wrought for Peter unto the apostle- 
ship of the circumcision wrought for 
me also unto the Gentiles), and when 
they perceived the grace that was 
given unto me, James and Cephas and 

a Gal. i: 18-24. t> Gal. 2: i, 2. 



GENUINENESS OF PAUL'S APOSTLESHIP. Q i 

John, they who were reputed to be pil- 
lars, gave to me and Barnabas the 
right hand of fellowship, that we 
should go unto the Gentiles, and they 
unto the circumcision. " a 

The business on which Paul, "by 
revelation, " went up at this time to Je- 
rusalem was the extremely important 
matter relating to the liberties of Gen- 
tile Christians, for which Paul con- 
tended successfully in the apostolic 
council there, as described with much 
fullness in the fifteenth chapter of 
Acts. 

As has been already indicated, the 
Epistle to the Galatians shows con- 
clusively, and this is strongly corrobo- 
rated by both Epistles to the Corin- 
thians, that the entire gospel of Christ, 
and the full apostleship to proclaim it, 
and to establish its institutions, es- 
pecially among the Gentiles, Paul re- 
ceived, not from man, nor through the 

a Gal. 2: 6-9. 



62 GENUINENESS OF PA UU S APOSTLESHIP. 

instrumentality of man, but directly 
from his ascended and self-revealed 
Lord. This, the other apostles ac- 
knowledged as readily and fully as 
he acknowledged the genuineness and 
divine origin of the gospel they pro- 
claimed and the apostleship they ex- 
ercised. 

Besides the post-ascension appear- 
ings of Christ to him, Paul had one 
experience, confirmatory of his apos- 
tleship, more extraordinary, in its es- 
sential character, than any undergone 
by the other apostles, John in Patmos 
not excepted. About the year 56 of 
the Christian era, Paul (whether in the 
body or out of the body, he knew not) 
was "caught up into the third heaven," 
11 caught up into Paradise, " and " heard 
unspeakable words which it is not 
lawful for a man to utter, ,,a which, 
whatever they imported, strengthened 
and confirmed him in his independent 

a 2 Cor. 12: 2-4. 



GENUINENESS OF PAULS APOSTLESHIP. 63 

and absolute apostleship. This won- 
derful experience, while it was followed 
by an abiding and humbling* personal 
affliction, was followed also by the di- 
vine promise of grace all-sufficient for 
his personal and apostolic duties and 
trials. a In confirmation of his full di- 
vine inspiration and of his true apos- 
tolic message, mission, and authority, 
Paul was divinely invested with ex- 
ceptional miraculous powers. The 
writer of the Acts says, "And God 
wrought special miracles by the hands 
of Paul: insomuch that unto the sick 
were carried away from his body hand- 
kerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases 
departed from them, and the evil spir- 
its went out." b In writing to the Ro- 
mans, Paul himself says, " I will not 
dare to speak of any things save those 
which Christ wrought through me, for 
the obedience of the Gentiles, by word 
and deed, in the power of signs and 

a 2 Cor. 12: 8, 9. t> Acts 19: 11, 12. 



64 GENUINENESS OF PA UL S APOSTLE SHIP, 

wonders, in the power of the Holy 
Ghost." a In writing- to the Corinthian 
church, among* other things, concern- 
ing its abuse of its manifold supernat- 
ural gifts, especially the gift of tongues, 
and, indirectly, concerning the claims 
of his own apostleship, Paul says, " I 
thank God, I speak with tongues more 
than you all: howbeit in the church I 
had rather speak five words with my 
understanding, that I might instruct 
others also, than ten thousand words 
in a tongue." b "In nothing was I be- 
hind the very chiefest of the apostles, 
though I am nothing. Truly the signs 
of an apostle were wrought among you 
in all patience, by signs and wonders 
and mighty works." c Paul had also, 
in great degree, the exclusively apos- 
tolic power of conferring spiritual gifts 
by the laying on of hands — the gift of 
tongues and the gift of prophecy par- 
ticularly — as recorded instances dis- 

aRom. 15: 18, 19. b 1 Cor. 14: 18, 19. c 2 Cor. 12: 11, 12. 



GENUINENESS OF PA UL *S APOSTLE SHIP. 6 5 

tinctly show. a He had also, in full 
measure, the apostolic power of visit- 
ing summary and condign punishment 
on notorious and specially pernicious 
offenders, for the warning- of others, 
doubtless; but, also, with a view, if it 
might be, of bringing the transgress- 
ors themselves to repentance. Thus 
speaking of the pains and penalties 
which he inflicted upon "Hymenaeus 
and Alexander," by delivering them 
for a time, into the dread hands of the 
lord of all evil, because of their ship- 
wrecking course concerning the faith, 
Paul says, "Whom I have delivered 
unto Satan, that they may be taught 
not to blaspheme." b In the exercise 
of this same judicial and punitive 
power, the apostle writes peremptor- 
ily to the Corinthian church, in rela- 
tion to an exceedingly iniquitous of- 
fender in its membership: "For I 

a Acts 19: 6. 2 Tim. 1: 6. Cf. 1 Tim. 4: 14. 
5 b 1 Tim. 1: 20. 



66 GENUINENESS OF PA UL S APOSTLESHIP. 

verily being- absent in body but pres- 
ent in spirit, have already, as though 
I were present, judged him that hath 
so wrought this thing, in the name of 
our Lord Jesus, ye being gathered to- 
gether, and my spirit, with the power 
of our Lord Jesus, to deliver such a 
one unto Satan for the destruction of 
the flesh, that the spirit may be saved 
in the day of the Lord Jesus." a 

In both of his Epistles to the Cor- 
inthians, especially in the ninth chap- 
ter of the First Epistle and from the 
tenth chapter to the end of the Sec- 
ond Epistle, and in the first and sec- 
ond chapters of his Epistle to the Ga- 
latians, Paul asserts, and defends his 
apostolic standing and authority, with 
great fulness and power — driven to it, 
against his natural modesty, by the 
contentiousness and disparagingmeth- 
ods of the Judaizing teachers, and 
their consequent evil influence toward 
the pure gospel of Christ. 

a i Cor. 5: 3-5. 



GENUINENESS OF PA UL S APOSTLESHIP. fy 

In the stern rebuke which Paul ad- 
ministered to Peter, recorded in the 
Epistle to the Galatians, there is a 
strong* illustration of Paul's independ- 
ent apostleship. The ground of his 
censure of Peter was not any official 
difference of view as to gospel truth, 
or order, but a temporary personal 
and private inconsistency of conduct 
on the part of Peter, in relation to so- 
cial intercourse between Christian Jews 
and Christian Gentiles — the momen- 
tary cowardice of a really courageous 
man, humbly trying to avoid giving 
offense. This, not only on account of 
the moral dereliction involved in it, 
but also because of its evil practi- 
cal bearing on gospel liberty, Paul 
sharply, justly, and withal, fraternally, 
rebukes. A few years afterward, Peter 
in his Second Epistle, declares, in hum- 
ble brotherly fashion, that "our be- 
loved brother Paul" wrote "in all his 
Epistles, ,, "according to the wisdom 



68 GENUINENESS OF PA UL S APOSTLESHIP. 

given unto him, "and that Paul's words 
thus written are "Scripture."* To 
Peter's mind, " Scripture " was "the 
word of God; " and, to Peter's knowl- 
edge, Peter's Master had said, " The 
Scripture cannot be broken." b So the 
Apostle Peter's testimony corrobo- 
rates the apostolic claim of Paul that 
the things which he wrote "are the 
commandment of the Lord." c 

The seeming contradiction between 
the teachingof Paul and that of James, 
on the doctrine of justification, affords 
no ground for disparagement of the 
divine authority of either Paul or 
James; for the difference between 
them is merely apparent, and not real, 
as a careful examination of their writ- 
ings on the subject, considered from 
the proper points of view, would 
plainly show. In no degree, and in 
no sense, are they either opposing, or 
even referring to, each other's views. 

a 2 Peter 2: 15, 16. * John 10: 35. c 1 Cor. 14: 37. 



GENUINENESS OF PAUL'S APOSTLESHIP. 69 

Each is contending* with a different 
antagonist — Paul with the Christ- 
less legalist; James with the lawless 
antinomian. Each is treating of a 
different sort of faith — Paul com- 
mending an evangelical, living, fruit- 
ful faith; James impugning a barely 
intellectual, unevangelical, and wholly 
barren faith. Each is speaking of a 
different kind of works — Paul show- 
ing the worthlessness of unevangelical, 
legal, dead works; James showing 
the value and acceptableness of evan- 
gelical, and, therefore, really good 
works, and their usefulness as evidence 
of genuine faith. Each is discussing 
different aspects, if not different kinds, 
of justification — Paul the justification 
of the soul by faith, before God; James 
the justification of the believer's pro- 
fession of faith by his works, before 
men: and so, also, each, by way of 
illustration, is referring to entirely dif- 
ferent incidents and periods in the life 



jq GENUINENESS OF PAUL'S APOSTLESHIP, 

of Abraham — Paul to the faith of 
Abraham at the outset of his believing- 
career, which was counted unto him 
for righteousness; James to the obe- 
dience of Abraham in an incident of 
his life twenty years later, which justi- 
fied, or proved, Abraham to all men 
as a true believer. Each is governed 
by a different purpose — Paul is en- 
deavoring- to set right the man who is 
building" on a false foundation; James 
is endeavoring- to induce indolent and 
inconsistent professors to build the 
right superstructure. Paul endeavors 
to plant the right root; James to de- 
velop the rig-ht fruit. Paul endeavors 
to lead his readers to attain true justi- 
fication; James, to give true evidence 
of their justification. 

Nearly any two evangelical men 
contending;, respectively, with legal- 
ists and antinomians, and almost any 
one and the same person contending- 
with those opposite errors alternately, 



GENUINENESS OF PAULS APOSTLESHIP. 



n 



would be sure, especially if their argu- 
ments were glanced at unreflectingly, 
to show the same apparent, but un- 
real, contrarieties of doctrine, while in 
reality their teachings, like those of 
Paul and James, would be, uninter- 
ruptedly, in the profoundest harmony. 
These two apostles, like two friendly 
swordsmen standing back to back in 
the midst of their enemies, in reality, 
defend each other, while each is con- 
tending with a different foe. 

From every point of view, the proofs 
of the genuineness of Paul's apostle- 
ship are ample and convincing. 



Chapter IV. 

THE EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTER OF PAUL'S 
APOSTOLIC MISSION. 

The mission of the twelve apostles, 
appointed early in the earthly minis- 
try of our Lord, was to plant living- 
Christianity in the heart of dead and 
decaying- Judaism. Their humble ori- 
gin, their provincial birth and rearing, 
their scanty culture and even their 
strong and narrow Jewish prejudices, 
so far from being- hindrances to their 
work, were in reality, conditions and 
factors of their success. A broader 
culture, a more cosmopolitan spirit, 
would have been prejudicial to their 
apostolic mission among the Jews resi- 
dent in Judea and Galilee; for then, 
they would have aroused against them- 
selves and their cause, the spirit of 

72 



CHAR A CTER OF PA UL'S APOSTOLIC MISSION. 



73 



prejudice, intolerance, and deadly hos- 
tility. Their mission, like the earthly 
mission of their Lord, was chiefly 
Jewish in its immediate aims and bear- 
ings. They were chosen as official 
witnesses of the entire public ministry 
of Christ, which, with the exception of 
two brief incidents, was wholly among 
the Jewish people in Judea and Galilee ; 
and thus, also, Matthias was chosen, 
probably from among" "the seventy," 
in the place of the lost Judas. 

The Christianity implanted by " the 
twelve," in the midst of the Judaism 
of Palestine, while in nature distinct 
from it, as the mistletoe from the de- 
caying oak in which it is rooted, was 
never completely disentangled by them 
from the roots and offshoots of Juda- 
ism. 

As a consequence, though not en- 
dorsed by " the twelve," the Chris- 
tianity of their Jewish converts was apt 
to have a decidedly Judaistic flavor; 



74 



CHAR A CTER OF PAUL'S APOSTOLIC MISSION. 



and their converts in Jerusalem and 
Judea were inclined to have an instinc- 
tive and strong* Judaistic tendency. 
The Jewish Christianity thus devel- 
oped under "the twelve," who them- 
selves had been singularly slow to 
learn Christ's will concerning the gos- 
pel call and reception of the Gentiles, 
was of such a type that their Jewish 
disciples were strongly disposed and, 
indeed, obstinately determined, to Ju- 
daize the Gentiles before Christiani- 
zing them; to demand their submission 
to rites and ceremonies of the Jewish 
ceremonial law, which Christ's death 
had fulfilled and rendered obsolete, 
before admitting* them to the privi- 
leges of the gospel — as if Christians 
were merely a Jewish sect, loftier and 
more advanced than older ones then 
existing, but requiring that a Gentile 
must become ceremonially and prac- 
tically a Jew, in order to be admitted 
into it. Though this characteristic 



CHARACTER OF PAUL S APOSTOLIC MISSION. 



75 



trend was not brought about, or coun- 
tenanced, by "the twelve," neither 
was it effectually counteracted by 
them. Indeed, the Judaizing tendency 
of the Jewish disciples of "the twelve/' 
though without their apostolic war- 
rant, and notwithstanding the explicit 
decision against it, by the apostolic 
council at Jerusalem, continued from 
its inception, through all after-times, 
to be, in all Christendom, a pernicious, 
insinuating, and aggressive evil. 

The characteristics and limitations 
which helped to qualify "the twelve" for 
the work of Christianizing their com- 
patriots in their native land unfitted 
them, largely, for a length of time, for 
aggressive work in the Christianization 
of the Gentiles, notwithstanding the 
fact that under a divine compulsion, 
Peter, in the case of Cornelius and his 
household, opened the door of Chris- 
tianity to the Gentiles, and notwith- 
standing the fact that, in their later 



76 CHARACTER OF PA UVS APOSTOLIC MISSION 

years and in other lands, Peter and 
John and other apostles seem to 
have worked almost indiscriminately 
among- Jews and Gentiles. The work 
of " the twelve " was primarily and pre- 
eminently a gospel mission to "the 
twelve tribes" — or what was left of 
them — scattered everywhere ; for which 
they were thoroughly qualified, and in 
which, as we may infer from the early 
portion of the Acts, from the testimony 
of Paul, especially in his Galatian and 
Corinthian Epistles, and from the gen- 
eral Epistles of Peter, John, and James, 
they were eminently successful. 

But the "other sheep," who were 
not of Christ's Jewish "fold," a of whom 
Christ prophetically spoke and con- 
cerning whom he greatly rejoiced in 
spirit, could be gathered and brought 
in, fully and effectually, only by another 
— a more largely, variously, and spe- 
cially gifted and equipped — kind of 
apostolic shepherd. 

a John 10: 16. 



CHAR A CTER OF PA UL\S APOSTOLIC MISSION. 



77 



The peculiar and extraordinary task 
of introducing- and organizing Chris- 
tianity, free from Judaistic taint and 
tendency, on the enlarged basis of an 
additional, new, and independent reve- 
lation of Christ and his will, was re- 
served for one who, by reason of his 
unequalled natural endowments; his 
great attainments in Hebrew Scrip- 
ture and Jewish ceremonialism; his 
intimate knowledge of pagan litera- 
tures, philosophies and religions; his 
Hellenistic birth and rearing; his Ro- 
man citizenship and knowledge of the 
world; his dialectic and oratorical 
skill; and, above all, his miraculous 
conversion, his personal meetings with 
the ascended Lord, his instruction 
through personal revelations of Christ, 
his special appointment by Christ, to 
apostleship, his own special Pente- 
costal experience in the Spirit, and his 
vast and varied supernatural knowl- 
edge and powers, was qualified to be 



78 CHAR A CTER OF PA UL S APOSTOLIC MISSION. 

at once the Moses and the Joshua of 
the new dispensation. 

No one of "the twelve/' nor all of 
them put together, had a tithe of his 
preparation and fitness for his peculiar 
task of severing" and launching the 
life-boat of Christianity from the sink- 
ing hulk of Judaism ; of confronting on 
their own ground, and overpowering, 
the demons of paganism; and, while 
recognizing and extracting the few 
shrivelled grains of truth then existing 
in Judaism, and the much fewer and 
feebler grains of truth then existing 
in paganism, broadly and thoroughly 
implanting and developing Christian- 
ity untainted with the poison, and un- 
tinged with the hue, of either pagan- 
ism or Judaism, in the great centres 
and outlying regions of Europe and 
Asia. How zealously, extensively, 
uncompromisingly, and thoroughly, 
he accomplished the mighty under- 
taking, the sacred record abundantly 



CHARACTER OF PAUU S APOSTOLIC MISSION, 



79 



shows. His imperial apostolic influ- 
ence has ever been present and pre- 
dominant wherever Christianity has 
obtained a foothold in the world. 
Manifestly, also, he steadfastly re- 
garded Christianity, in its true light, 
as a universal and uncompromising 
religion; and he constantly aimed at 
the fraternal unification of Jews and 
Gentiles under its banner of light and 
love. 

Though ready and eager to make 
the first offer of Christ and his salva- 
tion to the Jewish people, wherever 
he met them in the Gentile world, still 
his mission was essentially and su- 
premely a mission to the Gentiles. 
Immediately after his conversion, the 
Lord said concerning him, " He is a 
chosen vessel unto me to bear my 
name unto the Gentiles and Kings, 
and the children of Israel. " a In writ- 
ing to the Christians in Rome, Paul 

a Acts 9: 15. 



80 CHAR A CTER OF PA UL S APOSTOLIC MISSION. 

says, " Inasmuch then as I am an 
apostle of Gentiles, I glorify my min- 
istry;'^ and, in writing- to Timothy, 
he says, " I was appointed a preacher 
and an apostle ( I speak the truth, I lie 
not), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith 
and truth." b 

While neither conflict, nor discrimi- 
nation, may be admitted between the 
apostles of Christ as to the authority 
of their apostolic acts and writings, it 
must be borne in mind that Paul is 
peculiarly and pre-eminently the apos- 
tle to the Gentiles; that, by Christ him- 
self, he was specially called and com- 
missioned to the Gentile apostleship; 
and that Paul's writings contain the 
fullest and most advanced revelation 
of Christ's will — a revelation of 
Christ's will which, while absolutely 
binding on both Jews and Gentiles, 
has, nevertheless, a peculiar breadth 
and fitness of application to the cir- 

a Rom. n: 13. t> 1 Tim. 2: 7. 



CHARA CTER OF PA ULS APOSTOLIC MISSION. 8 1 

cumstances and needs of the Gentile 
races. It was peculiarly his office to 
determine and " teach" the truths, "set 
in order " the institutions, and "ordain" 
the order, of the Christian system, 
among the Gentiles; and the things, 
therefore, which he wrote are forever 
to be received as "the commandment 
of the Lord." So far, therefore, from 
discriminating against, or disparaging, 
or ignoring, the apostolic authority of 
Paul, we, as Gentile peoples, should 
give special heed to his writings, as 
divinely designed for us in particular. 



Chapter V. 

THE APOSTOLICITY OF PAUL'S WRITINGS. 

The apostolic letters naturally suc- 
ceeded the other work of the apostles; 
and they were needed to supplement, 
confirm, and perpetuate it. In the 
earlier stages of their heaven-appointed 
business, the work of converting* sin- 
ners to Christ, of organizing believers 
Into churches, and of instructing them 
in the truths and principles of Chris- 
ianity, could effectually be done only 
by their word of mouth and personal 
activity. But when exercising their 
apostolic supervision and control of 
the many widely separated churches, 
apostolic writing became a necessity. 
The oral teachings of the apostles 
would be in the greatest danger of 
mutilation and distortion, from popu- 

82 



APOSTOLICITY OF PAULS WRITINGS. 83 

lar forgetfulness and the inevitable 
aberrations of tradition; and so, for 
the full and perfect preservation of 
their teachings in their own time, and 
much more necessarily in all after- 
times, they were obliged to have re- 
course to the abiding instrumentality, 
and minute accuracy of parchment, 
pen, and ink. The vagaries, uncertai n- 
ties, and contradictions of tradition, in 
ages before and after apostolic times, 
demonstrate its futility as a medium 
of permanent divine revelation. The 
safety of the Christian revelation 
could be secured only by inspired 
writings. 

The authority and impulse to write, 
and the matter and form of the writ- 
ing, in the case both of prophets and 
of apostles, were of divine origin. 
Moses "wrote" " by the commandment 
of the Lord;"* for, "the Lord said unto 
Moses, Write this for a memorial in a 

a Num. 33: 2. 



84 APOSTOLICITY OF PAULS WRITINGS. 

book;" a and what he wrote was called 
"the book of the law of Moses, which 
the Lord had commanded to Israel," b 
"the words of the God of Israel." 
Speaking through Hosea, concerning 
Ephraim, God said, " Though I write 
for him my law in ten thousand pre- 
cepts, they are counted as a strange 
thing." d To Jeremiah, the divine 
command to write came peremptorily, 
"Take thee a roll of a book, and write 
therein all the words that I have 
spoken unto thee." 6 In the divine 
communication of the Apocalypse, 
the Apostle John many times received 
the command to "write;' and he ap- 
pends to this marvellous writing the 
most solemn and terrible warning 
against adding to, or taking from, " the 
words of the book of this prophecy." ' 
The apostolic and divine design of his 
gospel he thus stated : "These [things] 

a Ex. 17: 14. b Neh. 8: 1. c Ezra 9: 4. 
d Hos. 8: 12. ■ Jer. 36: 1. ' Rev. 22: 19. 



APOSTOLICITY OF PAUL'S WRITINGS. 85 

are written, that ye may believe that 
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; 
and that believing ye may have life 
in his name." a Peter writes, as an 
" apostle of Jesus Christ," concern- 
ing- the things of the gospel, as he tells 
us, in order "that at every time ye may 
be able after my decease to call these 
things to remembrance ;" b and, as we 
have already seen, he declares that 
Paul, "in all his epistles," wrote, "ac- 
cording to the wisdom given to 
him," and, impliedly, places Paul's 
writings on the same level of divine 
inspiration and authority as that of 
"the other scriptures." Paul himself 
declares that in writing he has "the 
mind of Christ" and "the Spirit of 
God; " and that what he writes is " the 
commandment of the Lord." 

Concerning the divine origin of his 
gospel teaching, and of the language 

a John 20: 31. Cf. 1 John 1: 1-4. b 2 Peter 1: 1, 15. 
c 2 Peter 3: 15, 16 



86 APOSTOLICITY OF PAULS WRITINGS. 

in which it was couched, whether 
written or spoken, Paul says, "which 
things also we speak, not in words 
which man's wisdom teacheth, but 
which the Spirit teacheth ,,a — a state- 
ment which at a single stroke shatters 
the shallow and foolish theory of in- 
spiration which maintains that while 
the thoughts of the apostles concern- 
ing the gospel were divinely imparted, 
their words were left purely to their 
unaided, undirected choice — a theory 
which ignores the radical distinction 
between revelation and inspiration, 
and which, in effect, acknowledges and 
discerns no inspiration at all. 

By the Divine Spirit that possessed 
them, the apostles, Matthew, Peter, 
John, and Paul, were driven to write, 
in order that the divine revelations 
made to them might not become fugi- 
tive and evanescent, but abiding and 
available for all time. 

a i Cor. 2: 13. 



APOSTOLICITY OF PAUL'S WRITINGS. 8/ 

The writings of Paul and of the other 
apostles, though epistolary in form, 
were not private and temporary com- 
munications, but were of general and 
permanent character. Indeed, the 
epistolary form was better adapted for 
free, familiar, fraternal, yet authorita- 
tive, communication of advancedChris- 
tian truth having multiplicity of practi- 
cal bearings, to redeemed, regenerate 
brethren inside the church of Christ, 
than the more formal, oracular style 
of composition, anciently employed by 
the prophets, toward the unbelieving, 
carnal Jewish nation and the impeni- 
tent, hostile world without. It was a 
discriminating remark of Bengel, that 
"The epistolary form is a pre-emi- 
nence of the Scriptures of the New 
Testament as compared with those of 
the Old." 

The Pauline Epistles naturally ar- 
range themselves into several signifi- 
cant groups, which suggestively pre- 



88 APOSTOLICITY OF PAULS WRITINGS. 

sent Paul's conception of the nature 
and work of apostleship, from various 
points of view. First come the First 
and Second Letters to the Thessalo- 
nians; then the Letters to the Romans, 
Corinthians and Galatians, which re- 
semble one another in matter and aim ; 
then the letters of the first imprison- 
ment — Ephesians, Philippians, Colos- 
sians, and Philemon; then the pas- 
toral Epistles to Timothy and Titus. 
Hebrews, whatever its relation to 
Paul, stands by itself. The careful 
study of these different groups of 
Pauline letters, growing out of vari- 
ous periods, circumstances, and ex- 
periences, and showing the full sup- 
ply of the Spirit granted him for every 
apostolic situation and need, dem- 
onstrate strikingly the great range, 
power, and authority of Paul's func- 
tion as an apostle. 

In nine of the thirteen or fourteen 
Epistles ascribed to him — leaving un- 



APOSTOLICITY OF PAUL'S WRITINGS. 



8 9 



determined the Pauline authorship of 
Hebrews — Paul distinctly asserts, in 
the opening sentences, his apostleship, 
to remind his readers of the apostolic 
character, purpose, and authority of 
his letters; and in all his Epistles 
alike, he exercises supreme apostolic 
authority. From the outset onward 
he was careful to secure, by his sign 
manual and style of handwriting, the 
identification of his apostolic letters, 
and to guard them from being fraud- 
ulently, or mistakenly, confounded 
with the writings of any other person, 
as is indicated by a letter belonging 
to the first group of his Epistles: " The 
salutation of me Paul with mine own 
hand, which is the token in every 
epistle: so I write/' a 

Professedly, or impliedly, the let- 
ters of Paul are apostolic in design 
and force; and, in them, he exercises 
the widest and most absolute author- 

a 2 Thess. 3: 17. 



90 



AP0ST0LICITY OF PAULS WRITINGS. 



ity. In Second Thessalonians he says, 
" We have confidence in the Lord 
touching you, that ye both do and 
will do the things which we com- 
mand."* 1 " Now we command you, 
brethren, in the name of our Lord Je- 
sus Christ, that ye withdraw your- 
selves from every brother that walketh 
disorderly, and not after the tradition 
which they received of us." b Writ- 
ing to the Corinthian church, and giv- 
ing specific commands, he says, "And 
so ordain I in all the churches: " c " If 
any man thinketh himself to be a 
prophet, or spiritual, let him take 
knowledge of the things which I write 
unto you, that they are the command- 
ment of the Lord: " d " Now concern- 
ing the collection for the saints, as 
I gave order to the churches of Ga- 
latia, so also do ye." e Writing to 
the Colossians, he makes reference to 

a 2 Thess. 3:4. b 2 Thess. 3:6. c 1 Cor. 7: 17. 
d 1 Cor. 14: 37. e 1 Cor. 16: 1. 



APOSTOLICITY OF PAUL S WRITINGS. 



91 



"Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, " and 
says, "touching* whom ye received 
commandments; if he come unto you, 
receive him." a Writing" to Timothy 
concerning the management of the 
meetings of the churches, he says, 
"But I permit not a woman to teach, 
nor to have dominion over a man, but 
to be in quietness." b 

Such is the tone of unlimited, un- 
qualified authority, which — often in 
harmonious combination with tones of 
tearful remonstrance and tender en- 
treaty — pervades all the writings of 
the Apostle Paul, concerning every 
matter of Christian faith and duty, 
in individual, social, or churchly life. 

The function, therefore, of Paul's 
writings is clearly, strongly apostolic. 
They treat authoritatively of Chris- 
tianity abstract and applied, and cover 
the whole range of Christian thought, 
feeling, and action. Like the other 

a Col. 4: 10. t> 1 Tim. 2: 12. 



92 APOSTOLICITY OF PAULS WRITINGS. 

apostolic Epistles, they are an ad- 
vance upon the teaching of the four 
Gospels and of the Acts. In the Gos- 
pels, we have presented to us the na- 
ture, character, work, and aims of 
Christ, as manifested in the facts of 
his earthly life, ministry, sufferings, 
death, and resurrection. In the Acts, 
we see Christ, the facts pertaining- to 
him, and the salvation procured by 
him, proclaimed by apostles, and other 
preachers, to the world; the organiza- 
tion of those who believed, into 
churches ; and the beginnings of church 
life and activity. But the Epistles 
are, in fact, if not in form, inspired in- 
terpretations and expositions of the 
Gospels and the Acts; and, besides 
that, they are divinely inspired com- 
munications of larger, and more mi- 
nutely applied, revelations of Christian 
truth and duty — all made, not to the 
outer unbelieving world; but to, and 
within, the churchly circles of believ- 



APOSTOLICITY OF PAULS WRITINGS. 



93 



ers. Paul's letters are an authorita- 
tive enlargement and exposition of 
the revelation of God's truth and will. 
In these letters, Paul apostolically ad- 
judicates upon all manner of ques- 
tions, doctrinal, experimental, and 
practical; and though in many in- 
stances the immediate occasions of 
his discussions may have passed away 
forever, yet the truths and principles 
which he reveals, and sets forth, are 
of everlasting validity and of univer- 
sal application. Like Hale's "Analy- 
sis," Blackstone's " Commentaries," 
and Coke on Littleton — elucidations of 
the meaning and applications of law, 
which have the force of law them- 
selves — Paul's letters, while giving us 
Christianity expanded, give us, also, 
Christianity authoritatively expounded 
and applied. Paul's recorded deci- 
sions on the many major and minor 
questions, of various kinds, that came 
before him for settlement, are inspired 



g 4 APOSTOLICITY OF PAUL'S WRITINGS. 

precedents, for the decision of num- 
berless analogous questions of all 
sorts, in all ages, to the end of time. 
Thus it comes to pass, that much of 
our Christian knowledge, many of 
our distinctively Christian principles, 
and most of our Christian methods 
of procedure, in every department of 
Christian life and labor, are divinely 
given us, through the Epistles of Paul. 
Besides unfolding, in these letters, the 
great mass of Christian truth and 
duty in general, he, as peculiarly the 
apostle to the Gentiles, particularly 
makes known the mystery of their 
call to the full privileges of the gospel; 
defends their freedom from the yoke 
of Jewish ceremonialism; and sheds 
the fullest light on the entire gospel 
of Christ, in its relations to the Gen- 
tile world. These Epistles being, in 
their entire contents, a perfect revela- 
tion of the mind of Christ, given 
through the inspiration of the Spirit 



APOSTOLICITY OF PAULS WRITINGS, 



95 



of God, are all, and every part of them, 
of supreme authority, on all subjects 
of which they treat, and to which they 
apply. 

The particular Epistle from which 
the theme of this work is mainly de- 
rived — the First Epistle to the Cor- 
inthians — is very varied in its topics, 
and exceedingly rich and fruitful in 
its treatment of them. Principles of 
lofty character, and far-reaching ap- 
plicability and importance, are devel- 
oped in it, often in a casual way, while 
the apostle answers questions of local 
or general, and temporary or perma- 
nent significance — concerning the use 
of meats offered to idols, concerning 
celibacy, marriage, and divorce, and 
concerning the use of spiritual gifts 
in public religious exercises. From 
these apostolic decisions there is no 
appeal; and the principles apostolic- 
ally laid down are of everlasting va- 
lidity. 



96 APOSTOLICITY OF PAUL'S WRITINGS. 

Strangely enough, there are not a 
few persons, who, misapprehending" 
Paul's meaning in three closely con- 
nected passages in his First Epistle 
to the Corinthians, and not observing 
the drift of the argument of which 
these passages are links, imagine that 
while parts of Paul's Epistles are in- 
spired, other parts of them are unin- 
spired; and they maintain that Paul 
himself so teaches in these brief, suc- 
cinct portions of the Epistle. 

Now suppose, merely for argument's 
sake, that Paul is there admitting the 
non-inspiration of these same parts of 
this Epistle, then it follows that he 
knows when he is inspired, and when 
not; and that, in the latter case, he is, 
as in duty bound, careful to point out 
when his non-inspiration occurs; and 
as there is no other such passage in 
any of his Epistles, it follows that, with 
the exception of these few, brief, plainly 
indicated sentences, forming a small 



APOSTOLICITY OF PAUL S WRITINGS. 



97 



part of one chapter of one Epistle, all 
Paul's writings are fully inspired. 

But it can readily be shown that 
these passages bear no such meaning, 
make no such reference, and war- 
rant no such inference; and that, on 
the contrary, they necessarily involve 
the highest claims to apostolic inspira- 
tion and authority, and are, them- 
selves, the strongest exercise of these 
divine gifts. These short, interwoven 
parts of the Epistle were the apostle's 
replies to queries addressed to him 
by the Corinthian church, relative to 
marriage, in a time of great persecu- 
tion and general disturbance, when 
the Jewish nation was about to be 
broken up, and the near approach of 
the end of all things, foreshadowed 
by that event, was commonly appre- 
hended. In this time of disquietude 
and unrest, there were those who 
doubted whether the marriage bond 
and relationship, even when both par- 

7 



9 8 



APOSTOLICITY OF PAULS WRITINGS. 



ties were Christians, should be main- 
tained ; who questioned more especially 
whether mixed marriages already ex- 
isting; between Christians and their 
heathen husbands or wives should not 
be promptly dissolved; and, further, 
who had grave apprehensions as to 
whether there was not grievous sin in 
making, or in aiding and abetting the 
making of, marriage contracts, even 
in the case of virgins, in such perilous 
circumstances, and in the face of such 
approaching events and disasters. To 
these three questions the apostle defi- 
nitely replied. 

Now, the whole mistake, so fre- 
quently made concerning the passages 
which contain his replies, consists in 
gratuitously supposing that, in them, 
Paul is contrasting the utterances of 
Paul uninspired with the utterances 
of Paul inspired, instead of recogniz- 
ing that Paul is, on the one hand, 
quoting the sayings of Christ, uttered 



APOSTOLICITY OF PAUL'S WRITINGS. 



99 



when he was personally on the earth, 
or when speaking- through the Old 
Testament prophets, and, on the other 
hand, stating his own Spirit-guided 
decisions, as Christ's fully inspired, 
fully accredited apostle* In thus put- 
ting his apostolic decisions side by 
side with the mandates of Christ on 
earth, Paul makes the authority of 
both unquestionable. In the one case, 
Christ was speaking with his own per- 
sonal human lips; in the other, Christ 
was speaking in and through his in- 
spired apostle. 

There had been divine commands 
concerning marriage in the laws of 
Moses, in the utterances of the proph- 
ets, and in the sayings of our Lord dur- 
ing his earthly ministry. These com- 
mands covered some, but not all, of 
the questions relative to marriage, 
which constantly arose in mixed com- 
munities, and among heathen converts 
to Christianity, in apostolic times. 



100 AP0ST0LICITY OF PAUL'S WRITINGS. 

The first of the three Pauline pas- 
sages referred to relates to the ques- 
tion of divorce of Christian husbands 
and wives, and reads thus : " But unto 
the married I give charge, yea not I, 
but the Lord, That the wife depart 
not from her husband (but and if she 
depart, let her remain unmarried, or 
else be reconciled to her husband); 
and that the husband leave not his 
wife. ,,a In the days of his flesh, our 
Lord had spoken distinctly and em- 
phatically enough, forbidding all such 
separations : " So that they are no 
more twain, but one flesh. What 
therefore God hath joined together, 
let not man put asunder." b " And I 
say unto you, Whosoever shall put 
away his wife, except for fornication, 
and shall marry another, committeth 
adultery: and he that marrieth her 
when she is put away committeth 

a i Cor. 7: 10 
t> Matt. 19: 6. Cf. Mai 2: 14-16 



APOSTOLICITY OF PA UL % S WRITINGS. \ 1 

adultery." a This being the Lord's own 
personal command during his life on 
earth, Paul simply repeats it: " But to 
the married I give charge, yea not I, 
but the Lord, That the wife depart not 
from her husband .... and that the 
husband leave not his wife." b When 
a true law exists that fully covers the 
class of cases for which it was enacted, 
why make another law in its stead ? 
Had the Lord himself not already 
given a command concerning the 
matter, Paul, as his inspired apostle, 
would have been prepared infallibly 
to decide the case, but the Lord, while 
on earth, having spoken, Paul simply 
echoes and emphasizes his command. 
The second passage occurs only two 
verses further on, and relates to the 
dissolution of mixed marriages then 
existing between Christians and the 
heathen. The divine commands by 
the prophets under the legal Jewish 

a Matt. 19: 9. b 1 Cor. 7: 10. 



102 AP0ST0LICITY OF PAUL'S WRITINGS. 

dispensation forbade marriages of 
God's ancient people with the heathen, 
and required the putting- away of 
heathen wives ; a but in his earthly life 
and ministry among the unmixed 
Jewish people in Judea and Galilee, 
the Lord himself said nothing bear- 
ing directly on the question, which in 
the circumstances did not come up, 
and needed not then to be discussed. 
But now that, in entirely changed sur- 
roundings, the question had arisen in 
mixed communities and pressed itself 
to the front, Paul, with the fullest 
divine inspiration, as Christ's apostle 
to the Gentiles, gives his positive, 
authoritative decision, supplementing 
previous revelations of Christ's will 
and annulling Israel's ancient prophetic 
law, so far as it might be thought to 
have any bearing on the case. Here 
is his apostolic decree: " But to the 
rest say I, not the Lord: If any brother 

a See Deut. 7: 3; 1 Kings 11: 2; Ezra 10: 3. 



APOSTOLICITY OF PAUL'S WRITINGS. 



103 



hath an unbelieving wife, and she is 
content to dwell with him, let him not 
leave her. And the woman which 
hath an unbelieving husband, and he 
is content to dwell with her, let her 
not leave her husband." a Nothing 
but the fullest consciousness of being 
possessed of Christ's mind, and of be- 
ing the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit, 
could have warranted him in making 
and enforcing such a decision. No- 
where else does he exercise higher 
apostolic authority, or imply the pos- 
session of ampler divine inspiration. 

The third and last of these passages 
occurs thirteen verses still further on, 
though it is virtually the resumption 
of a subject started in the first part of 
the same chapter; and it relates to the 
question whether it w r as not utterly 
wrong, in the circumstances, for vir- 
gins to marry, or be given in marri- 
age; concerning which matter, many 

a 1 Cor. 7: 12. 



104 



AP0ST0LICITY OF PAUL'S WRITINGS, 



Christians were in painful doubt. On 
this point, Paul gives no command 
whatever — the Lord had given none 
while on earth, neither does he give 
any now by his apostle. On the con- 
trary, Paul apostolically declares that 
there was no sin, even at that time, 
either in marrying, or in giving in 
marriage; either in refraining from 
marrying, or in restraining from mar- 
rying. It was not a question of 
right and wrong, but of personal ex- 
pediency and private judgment. But 
though Paul gives no command in re- 
lation to this question, he, neverthe- 
less, gives his apostolic judgment, or 
advice, that, owing to the troublous 
times, then existing, and still further 
apprehended in the near future, or 
"the present distress," as he calls it, 
it would be better, on the score of 
greater freedom from trouble and 
greater liberty for Christian service, to 
remain single. As one who has ob- 



APOSTOLICITY OF PAULS WRITINGS. ^5 

tained "the grace," the "mercy," of 
full, inspired apostleship, in which to 
be faithful, as a steward of the mys- 
teries of the kingdom, in resolving all 
such doubts and cases of conscience, 
for the people of God, he gives his 
apostolic judgment, or advice. It was 
part of this apostolic counsel that, in 
this particular matter, each person 
should feel himself at liberty to act in 
accordance with his private estimate 
of his individual nature and circum- 
stances. The passage runs thus : 
" Now concerning virgins I have no 
commandment of the Lord: but I give 
my judgment, as one that hath ob- 
tained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. 
I think therefore that this is good by 
reason of the present distress, namely, 
that it is good for a man to be as 

he is But and if thou marry, 

thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin 
marry she hath not sinned. Yet such 



106 APOSTOLICITY OF PAUL S WRITINGS. 

shall have tribulation in the flesh: and 
I would spare you." a 

To sum the matter up: — In the first 
of the three passages considered, Paul 
gives no apostolic command, because 
Christ in his earthly lifetime had given 
one already. In the second passage, 
Paul gives a full, firm apostolic com- 
mand, for the reason that Christ while 
on earth had given none bearing up- 
on the case. In the third passage, 
there is no commandment of the Lord 
given, one way or the other; for right 
and wrong were not involved in this 
case; and while apostolic advice is 
here given, part of it is, that, in this 
matter, private judgment of one's own 
case should be used in determining 
the course to pursue. 

It is utterly irrelevant, absurd, and a 
sheer wresting of Scripture to inter- 
pret these passages as if, in the slight- 
est degree, they impaired, or impugned 

a i Cor. 7: 25, 26, 28. 



APOSTOLICITY OF PAULS WRITINGS. 



107 



the apostolic function and authority 
of any part of Paul's writing's. 

A few verses later on, however, re- 
ferring* to the same general question, 
there is another Pauline passage, that 
is sometimes spoken of as seeming- to 
imply, upon Paul's part, a doubt of 
his inspiration at that particular point 
in the discussion: "And I think that 
I also have the Spirit of God." a In 
the Authorized Version, the meaning- is 
much obscured; but in the Revised 
Version, as just quoted, it is brought 
out more clearly. The apostle is not 
here expressing doubt, but certainty, of 
his inspiration. The term he uses for 
"think" (Soicco) does not imply doubt; 
but, often, as in the Saviour's words, 
" Ye think that in them ye have eternal 
life," b expresses firm conviction. To 
regard it as implying- doubt, after the 
manner of the modern colloquial use 
of the English word "think," is to 

a 1 Cor. 7: 40. t> John 5: 29. 



108 APOSTOLICITY OF PAUL'S WRITINGS. 

mistake the idiom and usage of the 
Greek. Hear what the discriminat- 
ing and candid Alf ord has to say upon 
the passage: "This is modestly said, 
implying more than is expressed by 
it,— not as if there were any uncer- 
tainty in his mind. It gives us the 
true meaning of the saying, that he is 
giving his opinion, as in verse 25: viz., 
not that he is speaking without inspira- 
tion, but that in the consciousness of 
inspiration he is giving that counsel 
that should determine the question. " 
And so, substantially, say leading in- 
terpreters generally. 

The words, " I also," of the passage 
— the "I' being emphatic — seem to 
glance at the pretensions of certain 
others, which, by strong implication, 
strengthens the view that, then and 
there, Paul felt, and, in the passage 
before us, was declaring, the certainty 
of his divine inspiration. 

As, in the scheme of divine provi- 



RE CA PI TULA TIOX. \ 09 

dence, the most massive and the mi- 
nutest things — sidereal worlds and the 
motes in the sunbeam — are all, neces- 
sarily and equally, under divine in- 
spection and control; so, in the scheme 
of divine inspiration, the most minute 
matters — such as Paul's epistolary re- 
quest for his cloak, his books, and his 
parchments — and the most massive 
truths — such as the incarnation, the 
atonement, and the election of grace 
— are all, equally, under the infallible 
guidance and government of the in- 
spiring Spirit of God. 



RECAPITULATION. 

In the progress of our argument, 
hitherto, we have seen the divine au- 
thority of Paul's writings to be firmly 
established upon four adequate basal 
truths: first, the nature of the apos- 
tolic office — an infallible speakership 
and vicegerency for Christ; secondly, 



1 1 o RECAPITULA TION. 

the genuineness of Paul's apostleship 
— certified by the manifestation of all 
"the signs of an apostle/' in him; 
thirdly, the extraordinary character of 
Paul's apostolic mission — through 
full and independent divine revelation 
and inspiration, to institute and ex- 
tend pure Christianity in the Gentile 
world; and, fourthly, the apostolicity 
of Paul's writings — each and every 
part of them being apostolic in char- 
acter and function, and, therefore, 
divinely inspired, and "the command- 
ment of the Lord." 

The practical bearings of the de- 
duction, thus securely drawn, are mani- 
fold and important. To discuss them 
exhaustively would be impossible in 
a single treatise; but several of the 
most important of them may be out- 
lined in the following chapters. 



PART TWO. 

PRACTICAL BEARINGS. 



Chapter VI. 

PRACTICAL BEARING ON EARLY CHRISTIAN 

HISTORY. 

The epistolary correspondence of 
the great personages, the principal 
actors, and the attentive observers of 
any period, country, or movement, is 
the most important, trustworthy, and 
available source of history. 

The transparency of purpose, the 
variety of topics, and the multiplicity 
of undesigned coincidences, charac- 
teristic of letter-writing, are the chief 
secrets of its historical value. The 
letters of Paul, when compared with 

each other, with Luke's account of 

in 



1 1 2 BEARING ON EARL Y CHRISTIAN HIS TOR Y. 

Paul and other apostles in Acts, and 
with contemporary Jewish and pagan 
writers, furnish, incidentally, but effect- 
ively, even apart from their inspired 
character, a great mass of evidence as 
to their own genuineness and minute 
accuracy; as to the truth of the gos- 
pel narrative; as to the main facts con- 
cerning the other leading apostles; 
and as to the historical character and 
course of Christianity in the first cen- 
tury. All this, such works as Paley's 
" Horae Paulinae," Lardner's "Credi- 
bility," and Conybeare and Howson's 
11 Life and Epistles of St. Paul " abun- 
dantly illustrate and confirm. But the 
inspiration, apostolicity, and, there- 
fore, divine authority of these letters, 
being firmly established, we are not 
left to mere conjecture, or remote in- 
ference, as to the type and course of 
the Christianity of the first century — 
that is, the formative, and perpetually 
authoritative type of true Christianity. 



BEARING ON EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 



113 



We have the nature of that Christian- 
ity defined; its spirit interpreted; its 
purpose unfolded; its history revealed, 
with absolute truth and certainty. 
Without the apostolic letters of Paul, 
our knowledge of the early history of 
Christianity would be of the most 
meagre and unsatisfactory description. 
With them, primitive and apostolic 
Christian history is accessible, well 
defined, and easily within our mental 
grasp. 



Chapter VII. 

PRACTICAL BEARING ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 

All teaching is based on fact. The 
rationale of fact is the substance of 
doctrine. Christian doctrine is based 
upon, and grows out of, the historical 
facts of the New Testament — the facts 
relating to the personal Christ, and 
those relating to his apostles, officially 
considered. 

Of the vast body of Christian truth 
thus revealed in the New Testament, 
concerning God and man, law and 
gospel, this world and the next, a 
great part is attributable to the writ- 
ings of Paul. For the sake of brevity, 
cursory mention of a few characteris- 
tic Pauline doctrines must suffice for 
these pages; and Paul's teaching con- 
cerning the unity and tri-personality 

ii 4 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. \ \ 5 

of God, the union of the divine and 
human natures in Christ, may safely 
be assumed without discussion. 

The doctrine of vicarious and im- 
puted righteousness is one of the 
most characteristic of Paul's teach- 
ing's. After proving that God, through 
his law natural and revealed, requires 
righteousness from all men, that all 
men are in fact destitute of righteous- 
ness, and that, for lack of righteous- 
ness, or for positive unrighteousness, 
all men are under legal condemnation, 
the apostle shows that Christ, by his 
obedient life and sacrificial death, of- 
fered freely to God in our behalf, has 
fulfilled the precept and exhausted the 
penalty of the law, and that thus he 
has brought in an infinite, everlasting, 
and substitutionary righteousness; so 
that, as to righteousness, he becomes 
the end of the law, and the hope of the 
gospel, to every one who believes in 
him. 



Il6 BEARING ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 

Of the election of divine grace, to a 
full and inalienable interest in the vi- 
carious work of Christ, and to all con- 
sequent blessing's, regeneration, faith 
and final salvation included — though 
that truth is distinctly asserted by 
Christ himself, by Luke, and by Peter 
— Paul treats with great fulness and 
power, maintaining that the election 
to salvation is divine, gratuitous, per- 
sonal, inalienable, eternal. 

Justification by faith, while unques- 
tionably present and potent in the 
other New Testament writings, is pre- 
eminently a Pauline doctrine; and our 
apostle declares, proves, defines, il- 
lustrates and enforces it, with great 
energy, and fertility of resource; and 
has made it the keystone of the arch 
of Christian truth, and the key of the 
ark of salvation. 

The spiritual union of Christ and be- 
lievers, a truth rooted in Christ's own 
personal teachings, is taught by Paul, 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. \\j 

with vast weight of argument, and 
with great wealth of metaphor and 
illustration. 

Paul's discussion of the doctrine of 
the resurrection of the body, has, to- 
ward the close of his First Letter to the 
Corinthians, particularly, a singular 
breadth of view, a resistless sweep of 
argumentation, and the swell and ring 
of a prophetic poem and paean of vic- 
tory. 

On these and many other Christian 
doctrines, Paul's teaching is full, ex- 
plicit, authoritative, final; and in rela- 
tion to each and all of them, it is 
the province of reason, after discover- 
ing that God infallibly speaks to us 
through him, pimply to inquire, not 
what he should say, but what he ac- 
tually does say, and to receive it with 
the meekness of submission and the 
obedience of faith. * 

* For a discussion of a group of characteristic Pauline 
doctrines, see Appendix I. 



Chapter VIII. 

PRACTICAL BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 

As doctrine is founded on fact or 
history; so ethics is founded on doc- 
trine. Christian ethics is rooted in 
Christian truth; and Christian faith 
determines Christian duty. Christian 
ethics presupposes Christian dogmat- 
ics; and Christian doctrine is the 
means of which Christian ethics is the 
end. Accordingly, we find that Paul's 
method, in his Epistles, is to make the 
first two-thirds of each of them, on an 
average, solid doctrinal foundation; 
and the remaining third, firm ethical 
superstructure. The ethics of Paul's 
Epistles has an exceedingly wide 
range, embracing, as it does, in a dis- 
tinctively Christian way, the duties of 
individual, domestic, social, business, 
civic, and churchly life. 

118 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 



119 



The motives employed in distinc- 
tively Christian ethics are unique, 
lofty, and powerfully constraining* in 
kind, being drawn chiefly from the 
character and cross of Christ; and, 
through the medium of the living* and 
active word of God, they are effect- 
ually applied by the Spirit of grace. 
Nowhere in Scripture, are Christian 
motives more elevated in character, 
more ample in volume, or more in- 
tense in application, than they are in 
the writings of Paul. 

In his marvellously beautiful prose 
poem on Christian Love — the thir- 
teenth chapter of First Corinthians — 
the great apostle brings that most 
noble, generous, and God-like princi- 
ple powerfully to bear upon the entire 
structure of Christian character, and 
upon all the relations and affairs of 
human life. One of the strongest 
applications and exemplifications of 
Christian love is the Pauline ethical 



120 BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 

principle of Christian expediency. 
This ethical principle differs radically, 
from commercial, political and Jesuit- 
ical expediency, in that it consists in 
the loving* sacrifice of one's own per- 
sonal rights and privileges, when need- 
ful for the safety and best interests of 
others, and in that it refuses to sacri- 
fice moral for material considerations, 
public faith for private or party gains, 
or to employ evil means for the at- 
tainment of even the most worthy 
ends. 

The writings of Paul unquestion- 
ably add fulness, elevation, applica- 
bility, and force to the system of 
Christian ethics. 



Chapter IX. 

PRACTICAL BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

Apart from the Epistles of Paul and 
the Acts of the Apostles — the latter 
written by Paul's inspired companion 
and helper, and largely occupied with 
the sayings, doings and experiences 
of Paul — we have extremely little in 
the New Testament, on the subject of 
church order. Among the personal 
utterances of Christ recorded in the 
Gospels, we have one strong saying 
from him, concerning his being per- 
sonally and officially the foundation 
of the church universal, and another 
saying concerning three steps to be 
taken in certain cases of discipline in 
the church local — the brother sinned 
against being required privately to see 
the offender, and endeavor to win him 

121 



122 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

to the right; that failing*, he is to take 
with him one or two others, and with 
them once more attempt to win the 
transgressor to repentance; and should 
that second measure fail, the matter 
is to be brought before the local church, 
which will make final disposition of 
the case. This, taken from the heart 
of Matthew's Gospel, is practically all 
that the Gospels record as having 
been said specifically by Christ, dur- 
ing his earthly ministry, on the sub- 
ject of the church and its order. 

In the First Epistle of Peter, there 
is a single passage — Peters address 
to the elders — which, by assigning 
to the elders the duties of overseer or 
bishop, proves the terms " bishop " and 
" elder " to be descriptive of one and 
the same office; and which, while forc- 
ibly setting forth the ministerial du- 
ties of feeding and overseeing the 
flock, also powerfully exhibits the 
duty of affectionate tractableness 



BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 



I2J 



which the flock should exercise toward 
its overseers, and the humility which 
the members of the flock should exer- 
cise toward each other. The teach- 
ing; of the Epistles of Peter on the 
subject of church order is almost 
wholly confined to this. 

The letters of Jude, James, and John, 
while rich in nourishment for the 
graces of true Christian fellowship, 
contain almost nothing on the subject 
of church order. 

As is evident from the transactions 
recorded in the earlier portion of the 
Book of Acts, Christ must, either per- 
sonally or by his inspiring" Spirit, have 
furnished the twelve apostles with an 
adequate revelation of his will on the 
subject of church order; but he left it 
for the inspired companion of Paul, 
while introducing his record of the 
greater part of Paul's apostolic minis- 
try, to give us any knowledge of the 
fact. 



124 



BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 



For inspired direction on the sub- 
ject of church order, we are confined, 
therefore, almost wholly to the Epis- 
tles of Paul, and to the Book of Acts, 
written by the helper of Paul, and 
treating- largely of Paul's career. 

It is with peculiar significance, there- 
fore, that certain words of Paul bear- 
ing- on this subject appeal to us: "As 
I g-ave order to the churches of Gala- 
tia, so also do ye. " a "And so ordain 
I in all the churches."* 



Section I. — The Nature of the Church, 

The writings of Paul furnish an 
ample exposition of the nature of a 
New Testament church. The teach- 
ings of Paul, on this and every other 
subject, are in perfect accord with the 
teaching-s of all other New Testament 
writers; but on the subject of church 
order, and on almost every part of it, 

a i Cor. 16: i. b i Cor. 7: 17. 



NATURE OF THE CHURCH. 125. 

his writings are much more varied and 
full than all theirs put together. 

As did Christ in a single instance,, 
so does Paul, several times, use the 
term "church" in what, after all, is 
its primary sense — the sense of the 
church universal; by which is meant 
the entire company of the finally saved, 
whether now in heaven or on earth, 
or yet to be. This, of course, is no 
earthly or visible organization, but a 
spiritual and heavenly body into which 
souls are directly admitted by regen- 
eration, redemption, and adoption. 

But ordinarily, Paul uses the term 
"church," as it is generally used in the 
New Testament, in the derived sense 
of the local, individual church; and 
hence, he speaks of "the church which 
is at Cenchrea," a " the church of God 
which is at Corinth," b "the church 
of the Thessalonians," c "the church 

a Rom 16: 1. t> 1 Cor. 1:2. c 1 Thess. 1: 1. 



126 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

which is in his house," a and of "the 
churches of Galatia," b "the churches 
of Macedonia," "the churches of 
Asia," d "the churches of the Gen- 
tiles," 6 "the churches of God." f 

As is plainly taught in the Paul- 
ine letters, each properly constituted 
church of Christ is a local society, com- 
posed, exclusively, of credibly regen- 
erated persons, duly baptized upon pro- 
fession of faith in Christ, organized 
and conducted for Christian culture, 
worship, and work, and, especially, 
for the dissemination of Christian 
truth, for the keeping of the ordi- 
nances, and for the evangelization of 
the world. 

These two significations of the term 
"church" — the church universal and the 
church local — are, properly, the only 
ones known to the Pauline letters, or 
to the New Testament. The secular 

a Col. 4: 15. c 2 Cor. 8: 1. e Rom. 16: 4. 

t> Gal. 1:2. d 1 Cor. 16: 19. f 1 Thess. 2: 14. 



NATURE OF THE CHURCH. i 2 j 

use of the term, employed a few times 
in the New Testament to denote a 
popular assembly, in no way concerns 
this discussion. The generic use of 
the term, which, by a rhetorical figure, 
speaks, in a very few instances, of 
many churches in the singular num- 
ber — just as we might speak generic- 
ally of " the family in Russia" or " the 
college in France " without implying 
a confederation of Russian families or 
of French colleges — gives no new 
sense to the term, but only a special 
application of its second and ordinary 
sense. 

Previous to the apostleship and 
conversion of Paul, as we learn from 
Acts, the principle that each church 
should elect its own officers had al- 
ready been established by the eleven 
apostles at Jerusalem, when they in- 
structed the church to choose for 
itself a subordinate class of officers, 
for the work of the diaconate; but the 



128 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

letters of Paul very forcibly enjoin the 
local church to exercise deference and 
kindly affection toward its officers, 
and, in connection with the deacons, 
to provide, for their pastors, adequate 
temporal support. From the Pauline 
letters, it is also evident that each 
true local church of Christ has, under 
the law of Christ, the right and duty 
of complete and exclusive self-gov- 
ernment, by virtue of which, the whole 
body is to exclude unworthy mem- 
bers and, by necessary presupposition, 
to receive worthy ones; a to maintain 
careful discipline over its members, 
suppressing all disturbances and di- 
visions; to manage its own pecuniary 
affairs; and, without imperilling their 
individual independence, or ignor- 
ing their individual responsibility to 
Christ, the churches have liberty to 
combine their means and influence to 

a Cf. Acts 10: 47. 



NATURE OF THE CHURCH. 



129 



institute and conduct special Chris- 
tian enterprises. a 

With thorough, candid, inspection^ 
of the letters of Paul, and careful com- 
parison of them with the rest of the 
New Testament, especially with the 
Acts, there need be no great difficulty, 
while this end is steadily kept in view, 
in ascertaining the nature of a New 
Testament church. Such a study of 
the subject can scarcely fail to make 
it evident that the great mass of nomi- 
nal Christendom has, one way or 
another, departed very far from the 
simplicity of the New Testament and 
its well-defined, and by no means 
elaborate church model . 

To call an ecumenical, national, or 
provincial organization of churches — 
whether allied or unallied to the state, . 
whether governed by state officials, or 
by ecclesiastical prelates, or by both 
combined, or by other ecclesiastical! 

a Acts 11: 29, '30. Gal. 2: 10. 2 Cor. chapters 8 and 9.. 
9 



130 



BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER, 



representatives — to call such an or- 
ganization, exercising dominion over 
the individual churches of which it is 
composed, a church, is to ignore and 
contravene the plain church princi- 
ples of the New Testament. 

In the light of the Pauline letters, 
many of our Baptist churches, in cer- 
tain portions of the United States are 
not free from error and inconsistency 
in church polity. There is prevalent 
in the Baptist churches of New Eng- 
land and in those of many Northern 
and Western States, a system of things 
in relation to one feature of church 
polity, which is out of character with 
Baptist principles, and foreign to the 
New Testament. 

The Baptist churches in question 
are, indeed, local, spiritual bodies of 
baptized believers, exercising their 
own internal discipline. But they 
have, for the most part, surrendered 
the control of the church property and 



NATURE OF THE CHURCH. 



131 



revenues, and, therefore, much in- 
fluence pertaining" to the church, into 
the hands of mixed societies — socie- 
ties composed of the adult members 
of the church and the adult members 
of the congregation, though the lat- 
ter are, with rare exceptions, uncon- 
verted persons. In some instances, 
these societies, uniting the church and 
the world, are permitted to have a 
voice in the selection of pastors. 
These mongrel societies, and not the 
churches proper, are incorporated and 
recognized by the laws of the land. 
Not a few excellent brethren in these 
churches have acknowledged and de- 
plored the evil of this state of things, 
and, in a measure, have sought to 
counteract it. 

How this state of things came about 
by Baptists weakly conforming* to 
their denominational and political en- 
vironments, would be an instructive 
and admonitory story. How and 



132 



BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 



when this now strongly entrenched 
and mischievous anomaly is to be 
rooted out, there is no prophet to fore- 
tell. The moral of it all is, Let Bap- 
tists, and all other Christians, beware 
how they connive at even the slightest 
aberration from the principles of the 
New Testament. 



Section II. — The Officers of the Church. 

The writings of Paul fully describe 
the offices pertaining to a New Testa- 
ment church. 

The office of apostle was not filled 
by the selection, nor did it belong to 
the economy, of any one particular 
church or any combination of churches ; 
but it was filled exclusively by the di- 
rect appointment of Christ, for the 
purpose of witnessing to Christ's res- 
urrection, and of revealing and ex- 
ecuting Christ's will in relation to all 
Christian things. From the nature of 



OFFICERS OF THE CHURCH. 



*33 



the case, as we have already seen, 
there were, and there could be, no suc- 
cessors to the original appointees. 

The office of evangelist was that of 
preachers of the gospel, doing special 
missionary work of various sorts, 
without pastoral charge — and such, 
virtually, are many of our home and 
foreign missionaries in modern times; 
— but while the office, unlike that of 
the apostles, needed to be perpetuated 
for the wider dissemination of the 
gospel, and for special work of one 
kind and another in various individ- 
ual churches, it belonged, like that of 
the apostles, to the internal economy 
of no particular church. 

According to the Pauline Epistles, 
the offices pertaining to the economy 
of a New Testament church are two, 
and two only, in number — first, the of- 
fice of bishop, presbyter, or pastor, as 
it is variously styled; and, secondly, 
the office of deacon; and in these 



134 



BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 



Epistles alone, have we a full account 
of both. 

Paul uses the terms " bishop," or 
overseer, and " presbyter," or elder, 
interchangeably and as equivalent, as 
also does Peter; and they both connect 
the duties of a shepherd, or pastor, with 
the office designated by these terms. a 
The scholarly Episcopalians, Cony- 
beare and Howson, candidly admit 
that "the terms 'bishop' and 'elder' are 
used in the New Testament as equiva- 
lent — the former denoting- (as its 
meaning of overseer implies) the du- 
ties, the latter, the rank of the office." 
So, also, the learned Dean Alford, re- 
ferring to Paul's interchangeable use of 
the terms "elder" and "bishop," speaks 
of "the fact of elders and bishops hav- 
ing been originally and apostolically 
synonymous." 

The failure to recognize and prove 
loyal to this plain New Testament 

a Acts 20: 28. 1 Pet. 1: 2. 



OFFICERS OF THE CHURCH. 



135 



teaching, is responsible for all the 
monstrous assumptions and pernicious 
innovations of the Romish and other 
hierarchies. 

The duties of the pastoral office, 
with the qualifications for it, are 
clearly and fully set forth in Paul's 
letters to Timothy and Titus, in his 
address to the Ephesian elders, a and 
in a less direct, but equally convincing 
way, in his letters to the churches. In 
general terms, the duties of the pas- 
toral office may be said to be to preach 
the gospel, to unfold the whole word 
of God, to interpret and administer 
the ordinances, to build up the Chris- 
tian character of those under their 
care, to superintend the discipline of 
the church, to promote Christian ac- 
tivity and enterprise in the extension 
of the kingdom of Christ, and in the 
practice of Christian benevolence and 
mercy.* 

a Acts 20: 17-35. 

* See Appendix II. on Divine Estimate of the Pastoral 
Office. 



!?6 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

In its primary sense, the Greek word 
Skikovos, translated "deacon," means sim- 
ply a servant, often a waiting-man, 
and it is frequently used in the New 
Testament in the ordinary sense of 
servant, whether the service involved 
be lowly or lofty. 

In its special and technical sense, 
as designating - the second order of 
church officers, it is used but a few 
times in the New Testament, and, in 
these instances, chiefly by Paul. From 
the primary meaning of the term, 
from the way in which it is used when 
denoting the office of deacon, from the 
qualifications prescribed for the office, 
and from the duties assigned to it, 
serviceableness, thoroughgoing help- 
fulness, is the prime characteristic, the 
supreme purpose of the deaconship. 

If we take the election and appoint- 
ment of the " seven," to manage and 
assist in the distribution to the poor, 
recorded in Acts 6 : 1-7, as virtually 



OFFICERS OF THE CHURCH. 



137 



the origination of the office, it becomes 
evident that deacons were designed to 
be helpers of the ministers of the word, 
by laboring- specially in the temporal 
affairs of the church; and the qualifica- 
tions for the office prescribed in Acts, 
and especially those in Paul's First 
Letter to Timothy, b show that they 
were to be helpers of the ministers of 
the word, by laboring to promote the 
harmony of the church, to elevate 
its spiritual tone, and to advance its 
spiritual well-being and efficiency. 
The work of the deacons is not to 
govern, but to help the pastor, by serv- 
ing tables, d — by providing, as it is of- 
ten aptly expressed, for the table of 
the poor, for the table of the minister, 
and for the table of the Lord. 

The office of deacon is no sinecure, 
no idle compliment, no empty honor; 
but an office designed for sagacious 

a Acts 6: 3. c Acts 6: 1-3. 

b 1 Tim. 3: 8-13. d Acts 6: 2, 3. 



I38 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

and loyal helpfulness, for self-sacrific- 
ing- and plodding" toil; an office emi- 
nently requiring for its right and full 
discharge, faith, humility, integrity, 
loyalty, wisdom, discreetness, sympa- 
thy, patience, liberality, consecration, 
and love. 

The deaconship is a " business; " a 
and that business is the working up, 
developing, and caring for the finances 
of the church — for current expenses 
including pastoral support, for the re- 
lief of the poor, and for missionary 
enterprises at home and abroad. Be- 
cause this truth is but little appre- 
ciated, and but slightly put into prac- 
tice, the cause of Christ is languishing, 
in countless instances, the wide world 
over, in the midst of innumerable 
golden opportunities. 

It would be an immense advantage 
to the cause of Christ, were suitable 
facilities for the proper training of 

a Acts 6: 3. 



OFFICERS OF THE CHURCH. 



139 



deacons for their exceedingly impor- 
tant work, commonly available — were 
there a well-prepared and widely scat- 
tered literature of the subject, and a 
thorough and widely prevalent system 
of institute work for this purpose. 
Then, other things being equal, those 
most important enterprises on earth, 
home and foreign missions, with their 
educational implications, would not 
be hampered, imperilled, and all but 
paralyzed, for lack of "the sinews of 
war." 

As it is, the culpable lack, or humili- 
ating caricature, of Christian benefi- 
cence, and the careless or covetous 
withholding of untold millions of the 
Lord's money from the Lord's work, 
that are prevalent throughout Chris- 
tendom, and that make its theory and 
practice so much at variance, in this 
particular, are attributable, in no small 
degree, to the common inappreciation, 
misconception, misuse, and neglect of 



I4 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

the office of the diaconate; for all of 
which, not the deacons alone, but also 
the church and the ministry are, on 
many accounts, responsible. 

One of the greatest perils of the 
divine institution of the diaconate is 
the modern, man-made invention of 
the trustee board, as it exists wher- 
ever prevail the previously mentioned 
mixed societies, constituted by the un- 
equal yoking* together of members of 
a Baptist church and unconverted 
people of its congregation, for the 
management of the church's pecuni- 
ary affairs. In these cases, which are 
very numerous, the trustee board, 
though a class of officials unknown to 
the New Testament, often becomes 
virtually an oligarchy, ruling the 
church and the pastor in many things, 
and usurping the principal functions 
of the diaconate, thereby reducing it 
to little more than a more or less orna- 
mental nullity. 



OFFICERS OF THE CHURCH. 141 

Besides this, in the many thousands 
of cases referred to, the trustee board 
is chosen, not by the church, but by 
the unhallowed amalgamation of the 
church and the world already spoken 
of; and as a consequence — except 
where churches with their anomalous 
societies, organize or reorganize as 
corporate bodies, under the provisions 
of recent state legislation — very fre- 
quently persons not connected with 
the church, and not converted, are 
chosen as members of the trustee 
board, and thus gain power to con- 
trol the use of church property and to 
influence the policy of the church, in 
many important particulars. 

Herein is manifest the evil and the 
insidiousness of the practice of sub- 
stituting human devices for divine in- 
stitutions. Deviation from Pauline 
or other apostolic principles, prece- 
dents, and precepts, blameworthy in 
any case, is specially inconsistent in 



142 



BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 



churches pre-eminently professing to 
copy and uphold exclusively New 
Testament models. 

When the real character and di- 
vinely assigned functions of the New 
Testament, and in particular, the writ- 
ings of Paul, with their manifold and 
decisive bearings, are duly considered, 
it is evident that all ecclesiastical legis- 
lation on doctrines, ethics, institutions, 
and ordinances of Christianity is a 
presumptuous meddling with the ark 
of God, and an utter usurpation of the 
office of Christ and his apostles, who 
alone have legislative power in the 
church, and who, in the inspired Writ- 
ings have given full revelation and 
spoken the last word on these sub- 
jects. 

The attempts ecclesiastically to leg- 
islate all manner of Christians into 
nominal and superficial unity, by 
means of compromise and external or- 
ganization, though attractive to the 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. 



143 



unthinking and unsettled, is a vain 
and ill-starred enterprise. There can 
be no true Christian unity except on 
the basis of the New Testament; and 
universal and complete return to the 
New Testament is the only way to 
bring it about. "Back to the New 
Testament'' is the word. 



Section III. — The Position of Woman in the 

Church. 

The writings of Paul determine defi- 
nitely the position of woman in a New 
Testament church. 

As to the divine bestowment of son- 
ship to God, with all the accompany- 
ing blessings of salvation; as to faith 
in Christ as the divinely appointed 
means of procuring all these benefits; 
and as to baptism as the divinely pre- 
scribed form for avowing* that faith, 
there is, as we learn from Paul, no 
distinction as to race, class, or sex — 



144 



BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER, 



"there can be neither Jew nor Greek, 
there can be neither bond nor free, 
there can be no male and female. " a 

But Christianity has not abolished 
the distinction of sex, either physically 
or ethically. Though, besides grant- 
ing* her an equal share with man, in 
the great salvation, Christianity has 
wrought marvels of mercy for woman- 
kind, relieving her of many grievous 
burdens, bestowing upon her many 
inestimable privileges, elevating the 
plane of her existence, and opening 
up to her many suitable spheres of 
usefulness; yet it has never contra- 
vened or ignored, but has ever sanc- 
tioned and insisted upon, the primary 
law of her being, her supplemental, 
auxiliary, and subordinate, though dig- 
nified and honorable, relation to man. 
Though Christ showed sympathetic 
interest in, and gracious respect for, 
womankind; though he drew women 

a Gal. 3: 26-28. 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. 



145 



in purest, warmest, and most reveren- 
tial devotion to himself; though he 
imparted to them his most precious 
and sacred thoughts; though he con- 
stantly accepted their thoughtful and 
kindly ministrations; and though, at 
times, he employed them in impor- 
tant practical errands; yet it is the 
significant fact that he never called 
any woman to be an apostle, or to be 
a public preacher of the word. Though 
the apostles recognized and highly 
esteemed the glowing saintliness, the 
heroic loyalty, and the self-sacrificing 
devotion, characteristic of the best 
Christian women, yet these divinely 
inspired vicegerents of Christ never 
appointed women to fill either of the 
two constitutional offices of a Chris- 
tian church; but directed that, in all 
cases, these offices should be filled by 
men. a Though Christianity has large- 
use for the varied and facile powers of 

a 1 Tim. 3: i, 2. 2 Tim. 2: 2. Acts 6: 3. 1 Tim. 3: 12,. 
10 



I 4 6 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

woman, and of the direct and indirect 
influence of woman, in the home, in 
society, and in the church, yet it ever 
avoids giving* to her undue, or unnat- 
ural, publicity. 

The writings of Paul strongly for- 
bid women to speak, or to lead in 
prayer, in mixed public assemblies. 
" Let the women keep silence in the 
churches: for it is not permitted unto 
them to speak; but let them be in sub- 
jection, as also saith the law. And if 
they would learn anything, let them 
ask their own husbands at home: for 
it is shameful for a woman to speak 
in the church. What ? was it from you 
that the word of God went forth ? or 
came it unto you alone ?" a 

"If any man thinketh himself to be 
a prophet, or spiritual, let him take 
knowledge of the things which I write 
unto you, that they are the command- 
ment of the Lord." b "I desire, there- 

a i Cor. 14: 34-36. t> 1 Cor. 14: 37. 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. 



147 



fore, that the men pray in every place, 
lifting up holy hands, without wrath 
and disputing. . . . Let a woman learn 
in quietness with all subjection. But 
I permit not a woman to teach, nor 
to have dominion over a man, but to 
be in quietness. For Adam was first 
formed, then Eve; and Adam was 
not beguiled, but the woman being 
beguiled hath fallen into tran \± 
sion. a 

Nothing could be more explicit 
than these apostolic injunctions. 

The ripest exegetical scholars in all 
the world have with singular unanim- 
ity maintained that these passages 
positively forbid women to speak in 
mixed public assemblies. Here are a 
few specimens of their expositions of 
these, or of one or the other of these 
passages: 

Dr. John A. Broadus: " Now it 
does not need to be urged that these 

a 1 Tim. 2: 8, 11-14. 



1 48 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

two passages from the Apostle Paul 
do definitely and strongly forbid that 
women shall speak in mixed public 
assemblies. No one can afford to 
question that such is the most obvious 
meaning* of the apostle's commands/' 

Dr. A. C. Kendrick: " Both these 
usages — women's speaking in public 
assemblies, and sitting at meat in an 
idol's temple — he has mentioned twice 
in this epistle, and each time for a 
distinct purpose of censure." 

Ellicott: " Every form of public 
address or teaching is clearly forbid- 
den as at variance with woman's 
proper duties and destination." 

Meyer: " After the apostle has for- 
bidden to the woman any activity in 
the church assemblies as unbecoming 
to her, he now points to the destiny 
assigned her by God, the fulfilling of 
which brings salvation to her." 

Neander: " Spiritual receptivity, 
and activity in domestic life, were 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. I4 g 

recognized as the appropriate destiny 
of women; and therefore the female 
sex was excluded from the public dis- 
cussion of religious subjects. " 

Godet: The apostle " draws the 
conclusion that the speaking- of woman 
in public is in contradiction to the po- 
sition assigned to her by the divine 
will expressed in the law/' 

Cony bear e and How son: "The 
apostle's meaning is that women are 
to be kept in the path of duty, not by 
taking upon themselves the office of 
the man (by taking a public part in the 
assemblies of the church, etc.), but by 
the performance of the peculiar func- 
tions which God has assigned her sex." 

With these interpretations coincide 
those of Calvin, Lange, Hodge, Van 
Oosterzee, Stanley, Schaff, Alford, 
and many others. 

As a general thing, through all the 
ages, the good taste, native modesty, 
and intuitive sense of Christian 



150 



BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 



women, wherever unbeguiled by mis- 
guided or designing" men, have readily- 
perceived the meaning - , acknowledged 
the propriety, and yielded to the au- 
thority of these divinely inspired apos- 
tolic commands. 

Various, however, have been the 
attempts from divers quarters, to 
break or evade the force of this apos- 
tolic interdiction. 

Sometimes it has been objected to 
the obvious meaning - of 1 Cor. 14: 34- 
37, that inasmuch as Paul had men- 
tioned the subject of women's speak- 
ing in public, in 1 Cor. 11: 5, without 
then and there condemning anything 
about it, but the unseemly manner of 
it, he can scarcely mean all that he 
seems to mean in the later passage. 
But in the former passage, Paul is 
condemning indecorous demeanor in 
public worship, and in the latter pas- 
sage, he is censuring the maladmin- 
istration of spiritual gifts; and the 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. 



151 



censure of the manner naturally be- 
longed to the earlier topic, and the 
censure of the thing itself, to the later. 

As Godet, Kendrick, and others 
point out, when considering this ob- 
jection, Paul deals in the same way, 
in this same Epistle, with another sub- 
ject of censure, the sitting at meat in 
an idol's temple. In 1 Corinthians 8: 
9-13, he objects to the practice, as it 
might seem at first sight, only because 
it might give off ense to weak brethren; 
but later on, in 1 Corinthians 10: 14-22, 
he condemns the thing in itself, as vir- 
tual idolatry. 

There is no inconsistency in the 
apostle's method in either of these 
twofold censures ; and the case must be 
desperate that depends upon setting 
the apostle at odds with himself. 

Sometimes it has been objected, 
that the apostle must have intended 
that this prohibitory injunction should 
apply to the Corinthian church only. 



152 



BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 



But there is absolutely no evidence of 
this. On the contrary, Paul's first let- 
ter to "the church of God which is at 
Corinth " — the address of the letter 
thus implying* that there was but one 
church in Corinth — says, " Let the 
women keep silence in the churches,'' 
thus making- the prohibition applicable 
to all other churches. Besides this, the 
similar prohibition in Paul's First Let- 
ter to Timothy, a representative young 
minister, must have applied not only 
to the church in Ephesus, to which 
he then ministered, but also to all the 
churches to which, at any time, Tim- 
othy or any one else, might minister, 
as pastor or evangelist. There is a 
strong conviction upon the part of 
many eminent commentators, and 
the American Committee of Re- 
vision, that the prohibitory passage 
in First Corinthians should have at- 
tached to it the preceding clause, so 
as to read, "As in all the churches of 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. 



153 



the saints, let the women keep silence 
in the churches." Be that as it may, 
these prohibitory passages in First 
Corinthians and First Timothy, re- 
spectively, are, whether taken singly 
or together, unlimited as to place. 

It has also sometimes been objected 
that the apostolic injunction under 
consideration could be of only tempo- 
rary force, and must have long since 
become in fact, and according to orig- 
inal intention, a dead letter. But 
there is not the slightest hint in the 
Corinthian passage, or its context, 
that the command is anything less 
than perpetual in obligation. Be- 
sides the kindred interdiction in First 
Timothy is apostolically founded on 
two grounds that are as perpetual and 
as wide as humanity — the priority of 
man's creation and the priority of 
woman's transgression — " For Adam 
was first formed, then Eve; and Adam 
was not beguiled, but the woman be- 



154 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER, 

ing beguiled hath fallen into trans- 
gression." a The priority of Adam's 
creation indicated his natural headship ; 
and Eve's priority of transgression 
indicated her greater liability to be- 
guilement, and her natural unfitness 
for headship; and therefore the relig- 
ious duties of speaking and praying in 
public assemblies were apostolically, 
and therefore, divinely, imposed ex- 
clusively on men. But whatever may 
be the precise logical sequence of the 
apostle's thought, it is unquestionable 
that he makes this injunction univer- 
sal and perpetual, by basing it on 
grounds that are as lasting and as wide 
as the world. Remembering the dread 
curse b pronounced upon all those who 
add to, take from, or substitute any- 
thing for, any part of the word of 
God, who should dare to extirpate or 
tamper with this or any other portion 
of it? 

a i Tim. 2: 13, 14. 
b Gal. 1: 8, 9. 2 Peter 3: 15, 16. Rev. 22: 18, 19. 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. 



155 



Sometimes also, it has been thought- 
lessly or venturesomely, objected that 
the Greek word XaA&>, a form of 
which is rendered " speak' in 1 Cor.. 
14: 34, 35, means "to babble;" and 
that, therefore, in that passage, women 
are only forbidden to babble in 
the churches — the apostle simply 
declaring that it is not permitted to 
women to babble, and that it is a 
shame for a woman to babble in a 
church. According to this extraordi- 
nary interpretation, does the passage 
imply that men never babble ? or that 
they are fully permitted to babble ? or 
that it is not disgraceful for women 
to babble, unless it is in a church ? 
Is not babbling wrong and disgrace- 
ful in either men or women, at any 
time or anywhere ? 

While it is admitted that in classic 
Greek, some such signification of the 
word may sometimes be found, the 
ripest scholars, among them the late 



I56 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

Dr. John A. Broadus, find no instance 
of it in the New Testament. Various 
forms of the word are found many- 
scores of times in its sacred pages, 
but never once do our translators 
give it the meaning- of " babble," or 
anything like it. To " speak ' is its 
true signification; and so it is com- 
monly used in the New Testament, 
when God the Father, Christ, the Holy- 
Spirit, angels, Moses, the prophets, 
the apostles, as well as others, are 
said to speak. There could be no 
more preposterous or presumptuous 
" babbling" than this attempt to sub- 
stitute the word " babble ' for the 
apostle's word " speak." 

There are those who would arbitra- 
rily restrict this apostolic interdiction 
to women speaking in the pulpit or 
on the platform. A person holding 
this view commonly says, in relation 
to this matter, " I draw the line at the 
pulpit and platform; but I would have 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. 



157 



women speak, without any restriction, 
on the floor of the house." But what 
the apostle says is not, " It is a shame 
for a woman to speak in a pulpit or 
on a platform; but " It is a shame" — a 
disgraceful thing — "for a woman to 
speak in the church" — in a mixed 
public assembly. 

If woman were apostolically per- 
mitted to address mixed public assem- 
blies, then, being shorter in stature 
and weaker in voice than men, she 
would have more need than men have 
of the elevation of the platform; and 
then if she were to retain any trace of 
the modesty that is the glory of her 
nature, the secret of her charm and 
power, she would sorely need what- 
ever shelter the pulpit could afford 
her. 

There are many who oppose the 
Pauline prohibition before us, with 
the argument from experience. It is 
said, the speaking of women in mixed 



158 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

public assemblies cannot be wrong", 
inasmuch as good has certainly come 
out of it. But useful as true expe- 
rience, when far extended, correctly 
observed, and rightly interpreted, may 
be, in many of the affairs of life, it is 
wild, dangerous, impious, for any man 
or body of men, to set fallible notions 
of shallow human experience in direct 
opposition to express injunctions of 
the word of God. The interpretation 
of experience that runs counter to the 
divine word cannot be true, and if 
trusted and followed, it must, in the 
long run, bring on the evils against 
which the divine counsels and prohi- 
bitions were designed to guard. The 
highest wisdom of man is only folly, 
when it exalts itself above the wisdom 
and will of God. 

It is easy to mistake the meaning 
of experience. A man may, for a 
time, preach the gospel effectually to 
others, and yet himself be not ap- 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. 



159 



proved of God, and in the end be- 
come a castaway. Infidels have been 
converted to Christ, through their 
own mocking observance of the Lord's 
Supper and their own derisive mim- 
icry of the preaching- of the gospel, in 
their club-meeting revelry. Many 
converts to Christ have been made 
through the preaching of the gospel 
by men who ultimately proved them- 
selves to be unconverted and corrupt 
at heart. Does it follow that infidels 
and other unconverted men are justi- 
fied in preaching the gospel, derisively 
or otherwise, or that we would be jus- 
tified in employing them thus to pro- 
claim the gospel, or observe its ordi- 
nances? That God may bring some 
good out of the gospel truth spoken 
by Christian women, even when it is 
done in a way that is inconsistent with 
his express orders, is neither to be 
doubted, nor wondered at. But it is 
monstrous and perverse to say that 



l6o BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

Christian women are, therefore, right, 
when they ignore and disobey certain 
injunctions and prohibitions of the di- 
vine word. However expedient and 
plausible it may seem to disregard 
and violate the word of God, at any 
point, it cannot fail to displease the 
Almighty, who says, "To obey is bet- 
ter than sacrifice, and to hearken 
than the fat of rams;' ,a and despite 
all apparent temporary advantages, it 
must, sooner or later, result in profound 
and far-reaching disaster. Through 
all the ages, the great and fatal de- 
partures from true and pure Christian- 
ity, in doctrine, polity, and practice, 
were brought about by men who con- 
sidered themselves wiser than men 
who were divinely inspired, and who 
substituted their own vaporings about 
experience and expediency, for the 
word of God. " There is a way that 

a i Sam. 15^ 22. 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. 161 

seemeth right unto a man, but the end 
thereof are the ways of death." a 

There are, in our day, a widespread 
disregard of, and hostility toward, the 
Pauline prohibition of women speak- 
ing* in mixed public assemblies. Un- 
fortunately, with many persons, the 
mere fact that the movement has an 
air of popular novelty is sufficient to 
establish, in their minds, its correct- 
ness and expediency, the Sacred Writ- 
ings to the contrary notwithstanding. 
To such persons, the mere statement, 
11 It has come to stay," appears cogent 
and unanswerable argument, in favor 
of any innovation, no matter how 
unscriptural it may be. But let it be 
remembered that Satan has come 
to stay; that infidelity, idolatry, and 
immorality have come to stay; and 
that nevertheless, the battle must be 
pressed to the gate against them 
uncompromisingly and persistently. 

a Prov. 14: 12. 
11 



1 62 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER 

Any other course would be cowardice 
and treachery. Let the word of God, 
and not popular crazes and captivat- 
ing- innovations, be the supreme rule 
and standard on this and every other 
religious question. " Yea, let God be 
found true, but every man a liar." a 

The tendency of the anti-Pauline 
woman's movement, so persistent in 
our day, is to subvert the three divine 
institutions — the family, the nation 
and the church; to unyoke the di- 
vine word from the neck of the con- 
science, and to dethrone God in hu- 
man society. The movement tends to 
weaken the bonds of marriage, as its 
history and the present condition of 
things abundantly prove; and it rend- 
ers the confusion of unscriptural di- 
vorces worse confounded. It seeks to 
introduce a new, subtle, and corrupt- 
ing element into politics, already too 
corrupt, by foisting upon the nation 

a Rom. 3: 4. 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. ^3 

the principle of woman's suffrage. 
Apt indeed was Horace Bushnell's 
characterization of this feature of the 
movement, when he made the title of 
his book against it, "The Reform 
Against Nature." The good sense of 
the great majority of Christian women 
has endorsed his account of it, by per- 
sistently refusing to sanction the move- 
ment, and, as is well known, leading 
philosophic minds, of the sterner sex, 
Christian and non-Christian alike, 
that had once given a more or less 
tentative approval of the scheme, are 
now recoiling from it, and uttering 
notes of warning against it. 

The leaders of the movement, as 
a rule, do not hesitate to proclaim 
war against the Sacred Writings — 
Old Testament and New Testament, 
Moses and Paul alike — wherever they 
do not coincide with their self-willed 
and revolutionary notions. 

A lady, long prominent in a partic- 



1 64 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

ular wing; of a certain moral reform 
movement, but conspicuous, also, in 
the cause of woman's suffrage, with 
which she and others have sought to 
ally it, has said, when speaking of the 
Pauline prohibition of women speak- 
ing in mixed public assemblies, 
" Christ, not Paul, is my teacher." Yet 
she, like everyone else, could not know 
one syllable of Christ's teachings, ex- 
cept as Paul, or other apostles, or 
other inspired teachers, have reported 
them. We have precisely the same 
authority to prove Christ's declaration 
that, after his departure, his apostles 
would be divinely inspired, and that 
their words would not be their words, 
but his, as to prove that Christ uttered 
the Sermon on the Mount, or any 
other of his sayings whatsoever. To 
reject Paul, or Peter, or John, or any 
other apostle, is, therefore, to reject 
Christ. Their injunctions are the 
commandments of the Lord. 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. 16$ 

Another lady, very prominent in the 
woman's suffrage movement, most 
profanely says, "The women who 
crowd our Christian temples are sedu- 
lously taught their inferiority in the 
scale of being and their subjection to 
man as sovereign; and the Old Testa- 
ment represents her as a marplot in 
creation, an afterthought, the orgin of 
sin in collusion with the devil, cursed 
of God in her maternity, and marriage 
made for her a slavery." " It is 
woman's position in the church and 
the Holy books accepted as author- 
ity, that make political equality so dif- 
ficult/' So, like many another leader 
and follower in the same and similar 
movements, she virtually says, "Away 
with the Bible, since, in the family, in 
the nation, and in the church, it places 
woman in a position auxiliary and in 
a measure subordinate to man! ' Yet, 
even her sacrilegious utterances are 
less glaringly inconsistent than the 



1 66 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

course of those who, while professing 
to regard the Scriptures as the word 
of God, seek, nevertheless, to nullify 
its precepts, or evade their force, as if 
they were the puerile and fallacious 
inventions of man. 

But these misguided utterances of 
the noted women just quoted, are 
but fair specimens of the sayings of 
the advance-guard of the movement 
in question, and are a true indication 
of its aims and spirit, and of its atti- 
tude toward Biblical Christianity. 

It is very noticeable and significant, 
also, that this anti-Pauline, anti-Scrip- 
tural modern development, naturally 
aligns itself with, and finds its quick- 
est growth among the votaries of dis- 
belief and misbelief, among those who 
reject what is most distinctive and vi- 
tal in Christianity and who embrace 
all manner of vagaries. Into what 
unnatural and perilous associations 
this movement would fain draw the 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. 



167 



true followers of Christ ! It would be 
well if, with regard to this whole mat- 
ter, Christian women, and Christian 
men, would "fear, lest by any means, 
as the Serpent beguiled Eve in his 
craftiness," their " minds should be 
corrupted from the simplicity and 
purity that is toward Christ/' 

But one of the most significant and 
astounding of isolated indications in 
connection with modern anti-Paulin- 
ism is the fact that a man of talents 
and attainments, high in the councils 
of a great Christian institution of 
learning, should venture to say, with 
reference to the matter in hand, " Men 
are not going to perpetuate a foolish 
custom, if an apostle himself advised 
it." To how giddy a height can hu- 
man presumption ascend ! That, too, 
in the face of the apostle's warning 
declaration in relation to the matter, 
" If any man thinketh himself to be a 
prophet, or spiritual, let him take 



1 68 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

knowledge of the thing's which I write 
unto you, that they are the command- 
ment of the Lord "! 

But let us turn for a moment to a 
different phase of the subject. The 
vast characteristic distinctions be- 
tween the sexes, in the economy of 
human nature, are radical and inerad- 
icable. 

As his physical structure, mental 
composition, and dominant impulses 
preordain, it is characteristic of man, 
in nature, society and art, to originate, 
form, and achieve. With regard to 
woman, on the other hand, as her 
physical organism, constitutional apt- 
itudes and proclivities render inevi- 
table, it is characteristic of her in the 
economy of human nature, to supple- 
ment, aid, sympathize and cherish. It 
is hers to give sanctuary and nourish- 
ment to embryo and infant, to nurture 
and mould the child, to be the helper 
and solace of manhood, and the emol- 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. iQg 

lient and moral and emotional atmos- 
phere of the home. In this sphere she 
finds her highest function, her natural 
adaptation, her truest happiness. 

The natural relations of the sexes 
are the union of principal and auxili- 
ary; the harmony of complemental 
differences. 

In answer to those who say that the 
subordinate and auxiliary relation of 
woman toward man is the result of 
degeneracy of womanly type and the 
primal and perpetual domination of 
man, it is sufficient to say, that as all 
the vital forces of both sexes unite in 
the perpetuation of the race, there can 
be no degeneracy or improvement of 
type in any new generation, in which 
the sexes do not equally share; and 
that the persistently subordinate and 
auxiliary position of the female sex 
through all history cannot be ac- 
counted for otherwise than on the 



170 BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 

grounds of woman's natural tendency 
and instinctive choice. 

Elevating- and refining culture, so 
far from tending; to abolish these dis- 
tinctions, emphasizes them, and ren- 
ders the types of male and female 
more divergent. It is only among the 
more" degraded and savage tribes, 
where brutality is most prevalent and 
most unrelieved that the great distinc- 
tions between the sexes are least ob- 
servable, and the woman is least dif- 
ferentiated from the man. 

Manhood and womanhood, when at 
their highest development and best es- 
tate, manifest most of all, their organic 
yet harmonious differences of type. 

In all this, the book of nature and 
the book of Scripture agree; and the 
Pauline precepts, given by divine in- 
spiration, concerning the position of 
women in the church, accord with the 
voice of God, concerning her, in cre- 
ation and nature. 



WOMAN IN THE CHURCH. 



171 



Those, therefore, who, whether men 
or women, rebel against these Pauline 
prohibitions, fight against nature and 
against God. 

There is this consolation, however, 
for those who, in these times of up- 
heaval and confusion, tremble for the 
safety of the ark of God, for the per- 
manence of Christian institutions, for 
the supremacy of Scripture, that inas- 
much as nature and Scripture are in 
profound accord and cannot utterly 
be overthrown, no matter how great 
and pernicious the perversions and 
evils of any particular time may be, 
the true people of Christ must finally 
return to the absolute rule of the di- 
vine word; and the latest Christian 
centuries must conform to the princi- 
ples divinely laid down for their guid- 
ance in the first. 

To close the matter up, it is evident, 
in view of the clearly proved apostolic 
functions and authority of Paul, that 



172 



BEARING ON CHURCH ORDER. 



his writings, which treat so fully of the 
matter, have a decisive practical bear- 
ing* on the subject of church order in 
all its departments. 



Chapter X. 

PRACTICAL BEARING ON ESTIMATE OF 
CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 

As they plainly claim and abun- 
dantly prove, the Holy Scriptures are 
divinely constituted the supreme 
standard of truth and right, and the 
final test of all opinions and practices, 
whether of long standing or of recent 
origin, whether generally prevailing 
or of only local acceptance. Till the 
end of time, all things are to be tried 
by the word. " To the law and to the 
testimony I if they speak not accord- 
ing to this word, surely there is no 
morning for them. ,,a "They have 
Moses and the prophets; let them 
hear them." b "And as many as 
walk by this rule, peace be upon 

a Isa. 8 : 20. b Luke 16 : 29. 
173 



174 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 



them, and mercy, and upon the Israel 
of God." a " And we have the word 
of prophecy made more sure; where- 
unto ye do well that ye take heed, as 
unto a lamp shining in a dark place." b 
Such are the claims of the Scriptures 
to the place of supreme authority in 
all matters of faith and practice; and 
they are not to be disputed. 

We have already seen that the writ- 
ing's of Paul, being divinely inspired 
and being a constituent part of the 
divinely prescribed standard of truth 
and right, are invested with the abso- 
lute authority characteristic of, and 
inseparable from, Holy Scripture. 

Now, the Pauline writings distinctly 
claim to be the infallible touchstone, 
the final test, of all attainments in 
Christian things: " If any man think- 
eth himself to be a prophet, or spirit- 
ual, let him take knowledge of the 
things which I write unto you, that 

a Gal. 6 : 16. b 2 Pet. i : 19. 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 



175 



they are the commandment of the 
Lord. ,,a This bold and crucial Paul- 
ine challenge — selected as the motto, 
and furnishing the motive of, this 
work — clearly teaches and firmly in- 
sists that no claims to spiritual and 
high religious light that do not ac- 
cord with the writings of Paul are 
to be honored or recognized. 

We are thus bound by the highest 
authority to accept and employ the 
writings of Paul as the decisive crite- 
rion of all pretensions to special spirit- 
ual insight and superior religious 
light. 

In the third section of the immedi- 
ately preceding chapter, the specious 
argument from experience, designed 
to justify departure from, or modifi- 
cation of, the rule of Scripture, was 
considered and confuted. It was 
shown that the genuineness of reli- 
gious experience and the justness of its 

a 1 Cor. 14 : 37. 



176 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 



interpretation must be tested by Scrip- 
ture, and that Scripture is neither to 
be condemned nor disparaged on the 
shallow ground of so limited and 
misinterpretable a thing" as mere 
human experience. It was shown, 
also, that if argument from expe- 
rience does not coincide with the 
writings of Paul, or with any other 
portion of Scripture, the experience 
is spurious, or the interpretation of 
it is false. On this point, nothing 
further need be added for the pur- 
poses of this discussion. 

At various periods in the history of 
Christianity, there have arisen in- 
fluential persons or sects claiming 
possession of high religious light de- 
rived from other sources than the 
Scriptures, and supplementing, modi- 
fying, or superseding the Scriptures in 
whole or in part. 

Early in the third century, the cele- 
brated Origen, a theologian of stu- 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 



177 



pendous intellect and intellectual in- 
dustry, but saturated with the Platonic 
philosophy, seriously perverted and 
paganized much of the Christianity of 
his own and later times, by pouring* 
his Platonism into his theology, and 
by indulging his propensity to inter- 
pret Scripture in an arbitrary, fanci- 
ful, and highly allegorical way — a 
way which has reproduced itself in 
many minds, in all succeeding ages. 
Against this self-willed, imaginative 
and sophistical tendency, how sharply 
the warning of Paul rings out: " Take 
heed lest there shall be any one that 
maketh spoil of you through his phi- 
losophy and vain deceit, after the tra- 
dition of men, after the rudiments of 
the world, and not after Christ"! a It 
would have been well for the cause of 
truth, in all ages, if Origen and all 
others had given due heed to that 
Pauline admonition, and to this Paul- 

* Col. 2 : 8. 



12 



i;8 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 



ine injunction: " If any man think- 
elh himself to be a prophet, or spirit- 
ual, let him take knowledge of the 
things which I write unto you, that 
they are the commandment of the 
Lord." 

In consequence of the great intel- 
lectual, political, and religious up- 
heavals of the sixteenth century, when, 
after ages of mental and spiritual 
stagnation, the minds of men sprang 
into volcanic activity concerning the 
greatest of human interests, both tem- 
poral and spiritual, there developed, 
at different times thereafter, a strong 
tendency to mysticism, which, as the 
etymology of the term suggests, is a 
closing of the eyes to the ordinary and 
external source of religious light — that 
is, the Scriptures — and a looking for 
spiritual enlightenment from an inner 
and preternatural source, virtually a 
divine revelation to, and within, each 
individual. 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS, 



179 



Several sects, organically uncon- 
nected, holding- these or similar views, 
claiming peculiar subjective light, 
chiefly on matters of statecraft, phi- 
losophy, morals, and religion, and bear- 
ing the arrogant title of Illuminati, 
arose in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and 
eighteenth centuries, in various parts 
of Europe and Asia. Most of them be- 
lieved that by mental abstraction, un- 
interrupted passive contemplation, 
and mystic devotion to God, a divine 
light was shed upon the soul, through 
a supernatural sense, and in a trans- 
cendental way. These, instead of 
testing their inner light by the Scrip- 
ture, tested the Scripture by their inner 
light; and thus naturally came to re- 
ject the Scripture, for the most part, 
or altogether — thereby setting an ex- 
ample that has been eagerly followed 
by many in the present day. 

In 1648, George Fox, a young Eng- 
lishman, unlettered, but much given 



I go BEARING ON CHRIS TIANA TTAINMENTS. 

to religious meditation and revery, 
having* come to believe that in every 
human being in all the world, there is 
an inner light, furnished by Christ 
and by the Holy Spirit, sufficient, 
without the Scriptures, to secure the 
salvation of men, if that light were 
duly used, devoted himself to the work 
of preaching the doctrine of the uni- 
versal inner light, as largely supersed- 
ing all other lights, and to that of 
showing the necessity of trying men's 
opinions and religions by the Holy 
Spirit rather than by the Scriptures. 
His message was virtually a protest 
against what he regarded as the ex- 
cessive " scripturalism" of that age. It 
was in reality, largely a protest against 
the dead formalism in religion, char- 
acteristic of the time; but, in his un- 
guarded recoil from that, he landed in- 
to the mystical spiritualities and practi- 
cal grotesqueries that have character- 
ized so many of his followers ever since. 



BEARING ON CHRIS TIAN A TTAINMENTS. \ 8 1 

It must not be overlooked, however, 
that a large number of his followers, 
known as Quakers or the Society of 
Friends, have come in later times in- 
to much closer accord with the beliefs 
of evangelical Christians generally, 
as several of their published state- 
ments of belief clearly show — though, 
indeed, the denomination has been far 
from uniform in its tenets; yet, such is 
the force of the doctrine of the "inner 
light" still potent among them, though 
less distinctly avowed than in former 
times, that they reject altogether the 
Christian ordinances of baptism and 
the Lord's Supper, as too "unspirit- 
ual " for their etherealized notions of 
what is becoming to the gospel dis- 
pensation, and on the same principle, 
they reject also the scriptural rule that 
women shall not be public preachers 
of the gospel. 

The opinion that the Holy Spirit in 
the mind of the individual believer, at 



1 82 BEARING ON CHRISTIAN A TTAINMENTS. 

any time contravenes and cancels his 
own inspired word — and it has gained 
much currency in our day — is a 
nourisherof carnal self-sufficiency and 
spiritual pride, and is a common 
source of delusions and snares. "To 
the law and to the testimony! if they 
speak not according- to this word, 
surely there is no morning for them." a 

11 If any man thinketh himself to be 
a prophet, or spiritual, let him take 
knowledge of the things which I write 
unto you, that they are the command- 
ment of the Lord." 

One of the most remarkable and er- 
ratic of all the mystics was Emmanuel 
Swedenborg — born 1688, died 1772. 
Till his fifty-fifth year his life w r as 
given to business, science, and philos- 
ophy; but for nearly thirty years, the 
latter part of his life was devoted to 
theology and spiritualism. His native 
strength of intellect, his scientific and 

a Isa. 8: 20. 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN A TTAINMENTS. ^3 

philosophic attainments, his exuber- 
ant imagination and fancy render his 
religious lucubrations of a highly in- 
tellectual order, yet as full of vagaries 
and phantasmagoria as an opium-eat- 
er's dream. 

Taking the subtle and fantastic 
products of his prolific and overheated 
brain as genuine revelations from God, 
though unsubstantiated by either mir- 
acle or fulfilled prophecy, he refused to 
test them by the apostolic letters, but 
actually sought to test the Sacred 
Writings by them; and finding many 
parts of Scripture incapable of being 
warped so as to endorse his ideas and 
theories, he rejected thirty-two out of 
the sixty-six books of Scripture — of 
the New Testament he rejected all but 
the Gospels and the Apocalypse. In 
his alleged interviews with angels and 
spirits of men from heaven and hell — 
apostles, prophets, and others — they 
are made to lose their own individual- 



1 84 BEARING ON CHRISTIAN A TTAINMENTS. 

ity and to speak the dialect and the 
ideas of Swedenborg. As Emerson 
says, "All his interlocutors Sweden- 
borgianize." 

Had Swedenborg recognized and 
reverenced the divine inspiration and 
authority of Paul's writings, and tested 
his meditations by them, instead of 
testing them by his meditations, he 
would have saved himself and others 
from rejecting one-half of the entire 
word of God, and nearly all that is 
distinctive in Christianity, and would 
have saved the world from a deluge of 
morbid and perverse imaginings. 

The transparent and impudent im- 
posture of Mormonism, founded on 
pretended visions and revelations of 
the crudest and most bizarre descrip- 
tion, could never stand any serious 
application of the test of Scripture to 
its doctrines, its institutions, or its 
morals. Though of vastly lower 
moral grade than Swedenborgianism, 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 



I8 5 



Mormonism has nevertheless, several 
strains of kinship with it, particularly 
its spiritualism and its anthropomor- 
phic conceptions of God. It shows 
distinctly to what low levels spurious 
Christians can sink, and into what far- 
off regions they can wander, when 
they cast themselves off from the 
moorings of Scripture and embark on 
the wild sea of their own vain imag- 
inings and the world's alluring lies. 

Modern Spiritualism, like ancient 
necromancy, is an attempt to procure 
light concerning the unseen and fu- 
ture world by means of communica- 
tions, to the living, from spirits of the 
dead. The system is a revivification 
and combination of the necromantic 
superstitions of remote ages and 
widely separated peoples. Sweden- 
borgianism has had much to do, at 
least indirectly, with preparing for it, 
and with bringing it about. The lat- 
ter half of the nineteenth century, a 



1 86 BEARING ON CHRISTIAN A T7AINMEN1 S. 

decidedly materialistic period, has wit- 
nessed the rapid development of this 
ghostly superstition. Despite the pov- 
erty and inconsequentiality of its rev- 
elations, the imbecile gibberish of its 
alleged communications from the 
mighty departed, the frequent and 
thorough exposure of its fraudulent 
phenomena, and the evident perni- 
ciousness of its fruits, Spiritualism has 
proved fascinating to people of a cer- 
tain marvel-mongering and fanatical 
type and tendency, in positions high 
and low. Notoriously, it is a peril both 
to right reason and to Christian faith. 
Devout reverence for, and implicit 
deference to, the writings of Paul and 
the word of God generally, are the 
specific antidote and prophylactic for 
this moonstruck superstition and anti- 
Christian craze. 

Originating in the latter third of the 
nineteenth century, and assuming 
the pretentious name of " Christian 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN A TTAINMENTS. \ 87 

Science," though innocent both of 
Christian doctrine and the scientific 
method, one of the most crass and 
pernicious of popular delusions is now 
running its course. It claims to be 
a new discovery of vital truth and 
mental power, by which the Bible is to 
receive unique and authoritative inter- 
pretation, and the world, relief from 
all manner of evils, mental and phys- 
ical alike. It may well be said of this 
new discovery of truth, that what is 
true in it is not new, and what is new 
in it is not true; and furthermore, that 
the great mass of it is only a farrago 
of old or revamped philosophical cru- 
dities and absurdities. It bases itself 
on the sophistical doctrines of mon- 
ism and extreme idealism, which 
teach that matter and all its phenom- 
ena, even such as body disease, are 
unreal; that there is only one sub- 
stance; that the one substance is spirit; 
that spirit is God; and that God is all. 



1 88 BEARING ON CHRISTIAN A TTAINMENTS. 

Thus its logical trend is toward some 
species of pantheism. 

It denies personality to God, alleg- 
ing* that personality involves finiteness; 
and, therefore, it makes the person- 
ality of Jesus merely human, though 
in view of a divine indwelling in him, it 
is pleased politely and poetically to 
call him "divine." Denying the reality 
of matter, and, therefore, the reality 
of disease, it instructs its votaries to 
regard all physical evil as non-exist- 
ent, as a mere figment of the imag- 
ination. Regarding the reality of 
physical evil and moral evil, alike, as 
inconsistent with the goodness of 
God, and both, therefore, unreal, 
it proposes to train its adherents to 
doubt and scout all physical and 
moral evil out of the world. This 
preposterous unbelief of obvious veri- 
ties, it ventures to call faith — instead 
of credulity and presumption. 

That vigorous and cheerful minds 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN A TTAINMENTS. \ 89 

may often beneficially influence per- 
sons subject to various nervous dis- 
orders and morbid mental states is 
known to nearly every one; but to 
dignify this truism with the title of 
"mind healing," flourishing" it be- 
fore all the world as a great discov- 
ery, and offering it as a panacea for all 
the ills that flesh is heir to, is arrant 
charlatanism. 

Like the Hagelian philosophy, 
which minimizes the function of con- 
science and the notion of sin, the 
11 Christian Science" craze inevitably 
belittles the sinfulness of sin, renders 
nugatory the atonement of Christ 
and the regeneration of the Spirit, 
and repudiates the full inspiration and 
authority of Scripture. Founded up- 
on sophistical lies in philosophy and 
upon daring negations of what is dis- 
tinctive and fundamental in Chris- 
tianity, it naturally develops delusion 
in thought, maudlinism in sentiment, 



190 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 



and laxness in morals. Invented by 
a woman with whom marriage was a 
failure, it boldly seeks to subvert the 
relations of the sexes as divinely 
determined in creation and redemp- 
tion. 

Brought to the test of Paul's writ- 
ings, or of the word of God as a 
whole, its folly and falsity become 
manifest, and it appears in its true 
character as " profane and vain bab- 
blings, and oppositions of science 
falsely so called. " a 

Right in line with the many forms of 
inner-light-ism strung along the ages, 
the so-called " Christian conscious- 
ness, " conspicuous in these latter dec- 
ades, has been asserting the vast 
claim of being either an independent, 
co-ordinate, or collateral source of 
religious light. 

As the metaphysicians and lexicog- 
raphers, in general, maintain, agree- 
ably to the derivation of the word, 

a i Tim. 6: 20 A. V. 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 



I 9 I 



consciousness is a knowledge and an 
accompanying- knowledge, a knowing 
of one's own self, of one's own exist- 
ence and identity, in intimate con- 
nection with a knowing of one's own 
states and activities. It is a knowl- 
edge of one's own being, in union 
with a knowledge of one's own action 
or passion, to use the latter word in its 
older sense. Consciousness may be 
said to be the personal perception of 
self, together with the personally per- 
ceived self-registration of one's own 
thoughts, feelings, and activities. 

In its own sphere, the authority 
of consciousness is absolute — from it 
there can be no appeal. Our sense of 
what we actually think, feel, or will, is 
developed in consciousness alone. 

But it is not the function of con- 
sciousness to determine the objective 
truth of the thoughts present in the 
mind, the legitimacy of its feelings, or 
the wisdom of its volitions. All that 



1 g 2 BEARING ON CHRISTIAN A TTAINMENTS. 

belongs to the reasoning; faculty, 
broadly considered; and the only busi- 
ness that consciousness has to do 
with these things is to record their 
simple presence in the mind, without 
pronouncing" on their quality or their 
validity. Thus so far as the proper 
function of consciousness is con- 
cerned, its deliverances are just as 
valid in a heathen as in a Christian, 
in a lunatic as in a sane man. It 
simply records upon the tablets of the 
cognitive self, the impressions made 
upon the mind, whether these are the 
vagaries of the insane, or the normal 
mental action of the sane, whether 
they are the superstitious thoughts, 
feelings, and volitions of the heathen, 
or the well-founded, well-digested, 
well-defined experiences of the high- 
est type of Christians. The ablest 
and safest metaphysicians, from Kant 
to Calderwood, so teach, substantially. 
But many advocates of the new 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 



193 



theology, desiring", in some measure, 
to supplement, modify, or supersede 
the teachings of the Scripture, strive 
to attain their end by assigning- to con- 
sciousness, or at least to the con- 
sciousness of Christians, or, as they 
call it, " Christian consciousness/' an 
entirely new and impossible function 
— that of being an organ of objective 
knowledge. They would make it an 
authority on doctrine and ethics. 
Whatever in Scripture accords with 
their Christian consciousness, they 
accept; whatever in Scripture does 
not accord with their Christian con- 
sciousness, they reject; and whatever 
in Scripture has not as yet found or 
reached their Christian consciousness, 
they superciliously ignore. Many go 
even further, and claim that their 
Christian consciousness is a real and 
safe light and guide where the Scrip- 
ture is silent. Thus they regard Chris- 
tian consciousness as a sort of divine 

13 



194 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 



inspiration, differing, it maybe, in de- 
gree, but not in kind, from that of 
prophets and apostles. 

But if Christian consciousness were 
what is thus claimed for it — a divine 
illumination and quasi-inspiration — 
its utterances would be the same, or 
consistent, in all Christian souls. Yet 
it is notorious that there is no unity, 
but only diverseness and discord in 
the deliverances of the Christian con- 
sciousnesses of the many who profess 
faith in Christian consciousness as a 
source of objective knowledge. By 
thus assigning to consciousness a func- 
tion entirely foreign to its nature and 
design, and belonging solely to the 
intellect, it comes to pass that con- 
sciousness, whose deliverances in its 
own proper sphere are final, is made 
responsible for the objective validity 
and divine revelation of the vagaries, 
caprices, and whims of each individ- 
ual, and, logically, those of all individ- 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 



195 



uals, however contradictory or absurd. 
This is to make human notions of the 
fitness of things, and human impres- 
sions and impulses of all sorts, the test 
of the Scriptures, the superior of the 
Word of God. 

Now, neither " Christian " conscious- 
ness nor non-Christian consciousness 
is, or can be, a source of objective truth, 
either independently or subordinately. 
The consciousness of a true Christian 
has, indeed, or may have, a deep im- 
pression of his intellectual, moral, and 
spiritual perception and reception of 
Christian truth; and it may thus enable 
him more vividly to realize its pre- 
ciousness and power. But we are all 
dependent solely upon the under- 
standing- for the perception of truth; 
and the understanding is dependent 
on the Scriptures for distinctively 
Christian truth, and upon the Holy 
Spirit's interpretive and strengthening 
influence for the fullest, clearest, and 



I q6 bearing on christian a ttainments. 

most effectual apprehension of the 
truth in Scripture. 

If, as is really the case, a Christian's 
consciousness differs nothing from 
any other consciousness, either in 
kind, in function, or in validity; if, as 
is equally true, it differs from any 
other consciousness merely in its con- 
tent; and if, as is no less true, it re- 
ceives its content, like any other con- 
sciousness, only through the intellect, 
it would appear that the term " Chris- 
tian, " as applied to consciousness, is 
largely a misnomer, and that the join- 
ing of these two words is no more 
suitable as a discriminative, distinct- 
ive appellation, than would be such 
terms as " Christian intellect/' " Chris- 
tian faculties," "Christian anatomy," 
and " Christian physiology." 

If the deliverances of "Christian 
consciousness" do not accord with 
the writings of Paul, or with any 
other part of the word of God, the 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 



197 



true nature and office of consciousness 
have been misunderstood, and the 
errors of the head, of the heart, or of 
the consequently warped conscience, 
have been mistaken, as, with the 
" Christian consciousness " theory, they 
often are, for its utterances. "To 
the law and to the testimony ! if they 
speak not according- to this word, 
surely there is no morning for them." a 
"If any man thinketh himself to be a 
prophet, or spiritual, let him take 
knowledge of the things which I write 
unto you, that they are the command- 
ment of the Lord." 

Closely connected, at some points, 
with the " Christian consciousness" 
error, is a prevalent delusion of subtle, 
seductive, and very serious character, 
relative to a particular part of the 
work of the Holy Spirit upon believers. 
Like many another dangerous error, it 
is the perversion of an important and 
precious truth. 

a Isa. 8: 20. 



I g 8 BEARING ON CHRISTIAN A TTAINMENTS. 

The work of the Holy Spirit in lead- 
ing* and helping; the people of God — 
in their thinking, loving-, choosing-, 
and attempting; in their praying, 
praising, and preaching; and in the 
exercise of all the functions and activ- 
ities of spiritual life — is something 
that, as followers of Christ, we are 
taught in Scripture to believe in, to 
seek for, to expect, to rely upon, and 
to be assured of. There can be no 
warrantable doubt that in all the 
forms of duty, active and passive alike, 
true believers are led and aided by the 
Spirit of God. "As many as are led 
by the Spirit of God, these are the sons 
ofGod. ,,a "The Spirit also helpeth 
our infirmity: for we know not how to 
pray as we ought; but the Spirit him- 
self maketh intercession for us with 
groanings which cannot be uttered; 
and he that searcheth the hearts know- 
eth the mind of the Spirit, because he 

a Rom. 8: 14. 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN A TTAINMENTS. 



I99 



maketh intercession for the saints ac- 
cording* to the will of God." a Un- 
speakably great and precious are the 
privileges of believers in the leading" 
and help of the Spirit. 

Notwithstanding the certainty of 
these things, it is a gross delusion and 
a perilous snare to believe, as many 
unguarded souls are coming to be- 
lieve, that the Spirit of God makes to 
believers distinct revelations of divine 
truth and of the divine will, other 
than, and independent of, what he has 
already set forth in his Holy Word. 
That he inclines and enables human 
souls to understand, receive, love, and 
obey the inspired word is certain; and 
that, in a secret yet effectual way, he 
leads the people of God in the way of 
life is not to be doubted. But, like 
many of the most vital processes in 
animated nature, these things are done 
below consciousness. It is not possi- 

a Rom. 8: 26, 27. 



200 BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 

ble to separate in consciousness be- 
tween the work of the Spirit of God 
and our own spiritual activities. Pro- 
fession of ability to make such a dis- 
tinction in consciousness is the unfail- 
ing sign of fanaticism and the very 
earmark of delusion. The results of 
the Spirit's work, such as faith, re- 
pentance, love, reverence, obedience, 
prayerfulness, joy, and peace, come 
into consciousness of course — these 
being personal states or activities of 
the soul — but the Spirit's direct ac- 
tion upon the soul is entirely secret 
and hidden. 

It is a prominent characteristic of 
the presumptuous delusion now under 
consideration, that its victims often 
come to regard their own arbitrary 
and capricious notions, their morbid 
impulses and disordered fancies, as 
direct communications from the Spirit 
of God. 

A medical expert has alleged that 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 2 0I 

the phenomena of snakes present in 
optical illusion, to the victim of de- 
lirium tremens is caused by the con- 
gestion of a network of extremely 
minute veins in a thin transparent 
membrane of the eye, and the conse- 
quent projecting* of the increased and 
serpentine venous circulation upon the 
field of vision. Thus the delirious in- 
ebriate sees simply the minute and 
tortuous circulation of the vital fluid 
in his disordered eye; but he imagines 
that he sees serpents of the largest 
size and most horrible and deadly de- 
scription. Even so, by projecting 
their own presumptuous thoughts, 
ambitious aspirations, and arbitrary 
inclinations, upon the field of their 
mental vision, the votaries of this 
subtle craze mistake the subjective for 
the objective, and mistake their own 
minds for the mind of God. But 
fanatical presumption needs to be 



202 BEARING ON CHRISTIAN A TTAINMENTS. 

guarded against, quite as much as 
rationalistic doubt. 

When they are wishing- to evade 
the force of certain Scripture com- 
mands or prohibitions that are dis- 
tasteful to them, there are those who 
delude themselves into the belief that 
they receive from the Spirit of God, 
inward answers to their prayers, re- 
lieving" them from the obligations im- 
posed upon them by Scripture. This 
is a monstrous self-deception, a blas- 
phemous presumption. It is not, and it 
could not be, the way of "the Spirit of 
truth" to produce in the minds of his 
people repudiations, or modifications, 
of the divine word which he himself in- 
spired — he cannot deny himself. 

This, like all other pretensions to 
superior religious light, other than 
that derivable from the Scriptures, 
must be brought to the crucial and 
decisive test of Scripture: "To the 
law and to the testimony! if they 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 



203 



speak not according to this word, 
surely there is no morning- for them." 
" If any man thinketh himself to be a 
prophet, or spiritual, let him take 
knowledge of the things which I write 
unto you, that they are the command- 
ment of the Lord." 

The brilliant advance in educa- 
tional methods, in physical science, in 
mechanical inventions, in travelling 
facilities, and in material comforts, 
during the last few decades, seems to 
have turned the heads, hardened the 
hearts, and perverted the moral judg- 
ments of many of the men of our time 
to such an extent that they neither per- 
ceive the spiritual glory of the Scrip- 
ture, nor realize their need of its illumi- 
nating power. Thus the light that is 
in them is darkness; and " how great 
is that darkness" ! 

Apart from the beneficent influence 
of Scripture, the present age is morally 
as blind, corrupt, and helpless as any 



204 BEARING ON CHRISTIAN A TTAINMENTS, 

of its predecessors; and even now, 
wherever the Sacred Writings are 
widely discarded, a strong- tendency 
to revert to the barbarisms and vice of 
the darkest ages is distinctly manifest. 

All modern claims and pretensions 
to superior religious attainments, must, 
like those of every earlier, and every 
later, century, be tested by the super- 
natural light that streams down to us 
from the first century, through the at- 
mosphere of the Sacred Writings; and 
by these Writings, the Writings of 
Paul included, must the principles and 
practices, with the claims and preten- 
sions, of this, and of all the centuries, 
be finally judged. 

Neither attainments in physical 
science, burrowings among the roots 
of dead or living languages, satura- 
tions of pagan and paganizing phi- 
losophies, nor achievements in any 
other pursuit whatsoever, can ever 
qualify or warrant any man to sit in 



I 



BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 



205 



judgment upon the divine word. The 
most distinguished preacher, the most 
noted theological professor, or the 
most influential religious journalist, 
must be condemned, who, in the 
smallest particular, ventures to over- 
ride, or fails humbly to sit at the feet 
of, inspired apostles, whose words, 
the Saviour said, would be, not their 
words, but his words, and the words 
of the Spirit who inspired them. 
Hostile criticisms upon divinely in- 
spired writings are the vaporings of 
presumptuous folly and rebellious 
self-conceit. 

Whatever in our civilization and 
customs, whatever in our religious 
views and ways, whatever in our 
church practices and pursuits, what- 
ever in our women's movements and 
organizations, and whatever in our so- 
cieties and methods for the religious 
training and culture of the young, are 
inconsistent with apostolic precept 



206 BEARING ON CHRISTIAN ATTAINMENTS. 

or precedent, must, on pain of divine 
displeasure, and of disastrous conse- 
quences sooner or later, be conformed 
to the divine standard of the Sacred 
Writing's in general, and, in particular, 
the Writing's of Paul. 

"If any man thinketh himself 
to be a prophet, or spiritual, let 
him take knowledge of the things 
which i write unto you, that they 
are the commandment of the 
Lord." 



APPENDIX 



I. 

THE FIVE-LINKED CHAIN.* 

A Study of a Group of Pauline Doctrines in 
Romans 8 : 29, 30. 

"For whom he foreknew \ he also foreordained to be 
conformed to the image of his Son< that he might 
be the first-born amo?igmany brethren: a7id whom 
he foreordained, them he also called: and whom 
he called, them he also justified: and whom he 
justified, them he also glorified!' 

The Epistle to the Romans is the heart of 
the Pauline Writings, and, indeed, of the whole 
New Testament ; and the brief passage before 
us is the heart of the Epistle to the Romans. 
This microcosm of Holy Writ deserves our 
most earnest and devout attention. 

In demonstrating the completeness and se- 
curity of those who are in Christ, the apostle 
has adduced, in the previous part of the Epistle, 
the vicarious and redemptive work of Christ in 

* This dissertation, from the pen of the author of this 
book, was published, April, 1886, in the Baptist Quarterly 
Reviezv . Presenting a group of leading and characteristic 
Pauline doctrines, it is here reproduced as a pendant to 
Chapter VII., in the body of this work. 

207 



208 THE FIVE-LINKED CHAIN. 

their behalf, the quickening and sanctifying 
operations of the Holy Spirit in their souls, 
and the benignant acts of God the Father to- 
ward them in justifying, adopting, preserving, 
and enriching them. It is further shown that, 
under the gracious control of God, nothing can 
effectually work against, and that in reality 
everything must work for, the interest of true 
believers. "We know," says the apostle, " that 
to them that love God all things work together 
for good, even to them that are called accord- 
ing to his purpose/' a Thus true Christians are 
described, from the human side, as those who 
love God, — love to God being evidently re- 
garded as the summary and essence of Chris- 
tian character and duty; and they are de- 
scribed, from the Divine side, as those " who 
are called according to" God's "purpose," — 
the being called according to his purpose being 
obviously considered as the root, or as the 
well-spring, of love to God and of similar gra- 
cious qualities in any human breast. At this 
point, the passage under consideration comes 
in, as further explanatory and descriptive of 
the call according to God's purpose : "For 
whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be 
conformed to the image of his Son, that he 
might be the first-born among many brethren : 
and whom he foreordained, them he also called : 
and whom he called, them he also justified : and 
whom he justified, them he also glorified." The 
logic of the passage has, for its major premise, 

a Rom. 8 ; 28. 



GROUP OF PAULINE DOCTRINES. 



209 



God's eternal purpose of grace ; for its minor 
premise, God's calling of certain human souls 
into the exercise of faith toward Christ, love 
toward God, and kindred Christian graces ; 
and, for its conclusion, the final salvation and 
glory of all who are effectually called. 

It is important to observe that the five verbs, 
7rpo€yvo), wpowpLcrev, c/caAecrei/, cSt/cataxrev, i$6£a<rev, 
translated, respectively, " foreknew," "foreor- 
dained," " called," " justified," " glorified," are 
in the aorist tense, the well-known function of 
which is to predicate completed action without 
special reference to time when. These verbs 
tell us what God did in purpose in the eternal 
past ; for, from the nature of the case and from 
the plain intimation of Scripture, his purpose 
is, and must be, an eternal purpose. All that 
God does in fact, he does in accordance with 
his eternal purpose ; and all that God has done 
in purpose, he does in the fulness of time, in 
fact. Both with man and with God, the pur- 
pose is the moral essence of the act. With 
man, it is true, because of his blindness, weak- 
ness, and changeableness, to will and to do are 
seldom commensurate and identical ; but with 
God, to purpose and to perform are, virtually 
and morally, ever one and the same. With 
God, the purpose and the result are inevitably 
linked together, and invariably and exactly 
coincide. God " foreknew," " foreordained," 
" called," " justified," " glorified," in eternal 
purpose, all those, and none other than those, 
whom, "in the coming on of time," he eventu- 

14 



2 1 o THE FIVE-LINKED CHAIN. 

ally calls, justifies, and glorifies in fact. The 
aorist is also singularly well-fitted, and, in the 
New Testament, is often used, to express the 
virtual completion of the divine act in the 
divine purpose; and Christ employed it very 
strikingly, when, in his own personal and offi- 
cial prayer, at the conclusion of his valedictory 
discourse, though the cross and the grave were 
still before him, he thus appealed to his eternal 
Father, in the inflexible purpose and in the un- 
wavering confidence of his heart : " I glorified 
thee on the earth, having accomplished the 
work which thou hast given me to do." Thus, 
in virtually identifying the divine purpose and 
the divine act in the passage before us, the 
great apostle has closely followed the example 
of his Divine Lord. 

In addressing ourselves more directly to the 
study of this five-linked chain of gospel truth 
and grace, let us first of all determine, sub- 
stantially, and with as much exactness as pos- 
sible, the sense in which the term wpoiyvo), or 
" foreknew," representing the first link in the 
chain, is here to be taken. To interpret this 
word as expressing mere naked prescience 
would give no adequate sense ; for the good 
and the bad, the finally saved and the finally 
lost, are equally objects of divine foresight. 
The term " foreknew" is evidently here used 
to characterize and distinguish the attitude 
and action of the divine mind toward those, 
and those only, whom God has, from all eter- 
nity, designed to make his own peculiar peo- 



GR O UP OF PA ULINE D O C TRINE S. 2 1 1 

pie. Nor may we mentally supply, as some 
interpreters have attempted to do, some such 
words as " would repent, believe, love and 
obey"; for there is no evident ellipsis in the 
passage; nay, there is evidently no ellipsis in 
the passage. The sense is complete as it 
stands ; and to supply such words, or their op- 
posites, or any other words, is eisegesis and 
not exegesis, is interpolation and not interpre- 
tation. Such treatment sets the passage in di- 
rect opposition to the plainest teachings of 
the apostle, not only in this but in other Epis- 
tles, as witness the following specimen pas- 
sages : God " saved us, and called us with a 
holy calling, not according to our works, but 
according to his own purpose and grace, which 
was given us in Christ Jesus before times eter- 
nal." a Again, M he chose us in him before the 
foundation of the world, that we should be 
holy and without blemish before him in love." b 
Once more, " By grace have ye been saved 
through faith ; and that not of yourselves : it 
is the gift of God : not of works, that no man 
should glory. For we are his workmanship, 
created in Christ Jesus for good works, which 
God afore prepared that we should walk in 
them." c 

The inserting of certain words after the 
word " foreknew," in the manner already indi- 
cated, has the effect of substituting the conse- 
quent for the antecedent, the end for the 
means, the effect for the cause. In that act of 

a 2 Tim. 1:9. b Eph. 1:4. c Eph. 2:8-10. 



212 THE FIVE-LINKED CHAIN. 

gracious omnipotence, accomplished by the 
Spirit of God in the souls of those who are in 
process of being saved, and variously denomi- 
nated in Scripture, a new creation, a new birth, 
and a resurrection, the soul, from the nature of 
the case, is and must be passive ; though, in- 
deed, in consequence of that quickening and 
renewing energy, it is sure to become active in 
the exercise of faith, love, obedience and other 
Christian virtues. To say, then, that God 
makes the foresight of such spiritual qualities 
in human souls as could come to be in them 
only as the effect of his own sovereign and re- 
generating grace, the motive and raison d'etre 
of his favorable regard, is to reason in a circle 
and to become involved in an absurdity. 
These two senses, therefore, for the word 
" foreknew " — the sense of naked prescience, 
and that of prescience of gracious qualities 
quite gratuitously attributed — must be rejected 
as unscriptural and absurd. 

What, then, is the sense in which "fore- 
knew" is here to be taken? It must be evi- 
dent to every one capable of analyzing 
thought and of weighing the force of lan- 
guage, that to know or to foreknow a person 
is something different from, and more com- 
plex than, to perceive or to anticipate a fact. 
But in order clearly to determine the signifi- 
cance of the word as here used, it is of great 
advantage to consider somewhat carefully the 
Scripture usage with respect to the word 
"know." It is obvious that the word "know" 



GROUP OF PAULINE DOCTRINES, 



213 



is frequently employed in the Sacred Writings 
in quite another than the primary and literal 
sense, though it will be found that the derived 
and secondary meaning is a legitimate out- 
growth, according to recognized philological 
laws, from the literal and primary. The usage 
of the New Testament, with respect to the 
word "know," closely resembles that of the 
Old Testament; in fact, there is a decidedly 
Hebraistic element in the New Testament use 
of the word ; and the reasons are not far to 
seek. The religious conceptions of the writ- 
ers of the New Testament were formed largely 
by their familiarity with the Old Testament 
Scriptures ; and their evidently intimate ac- 
quaintance with the Septuagint, the Greek ver- 
sion of the Hebrew Scriptures commonly used 
in their day, naturally accustomed them to 
use several important words of the Greek lan- 
guage in a somewhat Hebraistic sense. Thus 
they came to use the Greek jlvuxtko) in the 
pregnant sense, and as the full equivalent, of 
the Hebrew yada. Both of these words are 
used in the Old and New Testaments respec- 
tively, to represent acts of the understanding, 
of the moral judgment, of the affections, and 
of the will. Both are used in the senses of 
love, choose, approve, appoint, and in the 
complex sense of recognize, claim, and ac- 
knowledge as one's own. Both are used to 
express God's favorable regard and gracious 
love, as in Amos, 3:2, "You only have I 
known of all the families of the earth," and in 



214 THE FIVE-LINKED CHAIN. 

I Cor. 8:3, "If any man loveth God, the same 
is known of him." Both are used to convey 
the idea of divine approval, as in Ps. 1:6, 
" The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous," 
and in Matt. 7:23, and 25:12, " I never knew 
you," "I know you not." The term yada is 
used to assert divine choice and appointment, 
as is evident from Gen. 18: 19, as rendered by 
the Revisers, and substantially by Gesenius be- 
fore them, " I have known him," t. e., Abraham, 
"to the end that he may command his children 
and his household after him ;" and yuwK<o, 
when used with the prefix irpo } as in our pas- 
sage, is employed to affirm the eternal choice 
and appointment of God, as is evident from 
1 Pet. 1:20, as rendered in the Revision, where 
Christ as the chosen Lamb of God is thus 
spoken of, "Who verily was foreknown indeed 
before the foundation of the world," i. e., as 
the Authorized Version has it, "foreordained 
before the foundation of the world." That 
7rpoyiv(i(TK0) retains, as was to be expected, the 
pregnant meaning of ywwo-KO) and its Hebrew 
equivalent, is demonstrated by the passage 
just quoted, and by other instances in which it 
occurs, as, for example, in Rom. 11:2, "God 
did not cast off his people which he fore- 
knew, " i. e. y whom he fore-loved, fore-chose, 
and fore-recognized as his own. 

The fuller senses of yada, and of yiva>o-*co 
with and without prefix, are a natural growth 
from their primary and literal sense of per- 
ceive or apprehend ; and the usage with re- 



GR O UP OF PA ULINE D O CTRINES, 2 1 5 

spect to corresponding words in other lan- 
guages, English included, furnishes a broad 
analogy. As perception, or knowledge, real 
or imaginary, is the necessary condition of 
love, choice, appointment, and approval, these 
latter come by metonymy to be expressed in 
the terms belonging primarily to the former. 

In the larger and fully authorized sense 
already indicated, the term " foreknew" is 
here to be taken ; that alone being consistent 
with the apostle's argument and with the gen- 
eral character of his teaching. But which is 
the precise, or, rather, which is the more 
prominent, shade of this larger meaning, in 
which we should take the term, it is difficult 
with minute accuracy to determine. The best 
interpreters, though substantially in accord, 
vary considerably in detail. Erasmus takes 
the sense of the word as foreloved ; Calvin, as 
elected and adopted ; Alford, in somewhat of the 
ordinary sense, with an implicatio?i of the larger 
meaning and in co-ordination with for 'e ordination ; 
Tholuck, as foredecreed, in the earlier editions, 
but in the later, as fore-recog?iized as his own; 
Hodge, as peculiarly loved and elected; Brown, 
as exercised peculiar and gracious complace?icy ; 
and Lange, though not defining it sharply, 
seems to regard the word as much the same as 
the Hebrew yada which he defines as " the one 
collective Hebrew term for knowing, loving, 
being present at, and begetting." 

But with all their variety in form of state- 
ment, these interpretations, when analyzed and 



2l6 THE FIVE-LINKED CHAIN, 

compared, are, in substance and logical effect, 
the same. Though apparently distinct as the 
billows, they are really one as the sea. They 
are not antagonistic, but complemental, and, 
to a certain extent, each implies every other. 
They all, in effect, repudiate the sense of mere 
naked prescience, and that of prescience of 
spiritual qualities, as the meaning of the term 
"foreknew," as here used; and, in effect, they 
all maintain that the word implies and ex- 
presses the eternal and distinguishing favor of 
God toward those whom, on this account, he 
determines eventually to save. These inter- 
pretations thus oppose the same errors, uphold 
the same truths, and cohere and inhere in one 
common centre of unity. 

In view of all the facts, therefore, we need 
not hesitate to hold, with considerable confi- 
dence, that the term "foreknew," as used in 
this passage, declares, in a composite and am- 
ple sense, God's sovereign and eternal favor, 
love, choice, and recognition and acknowledg- 
ment as his own, in regard to those whom, for 
no possible reason in them, but for reasons im- 
manent and hidden in himself, he, of his own 
good pleasure, predestined to salvation and 
eternal life. This much is demanded by the 
logic of the passage ; and this much is sanc- 
tioned and accorded by the usus loquendi of 
Scripture and by the analogy of faith. 

We may now proceed to consider the second 
link in the chain of grace, represented by the 
word 7rpo<i)pLo-ev, or "foreordained." The verb 



GROUP OF PAULINE DOCTRINES. 



217 



7rpoopt^o> occurs only six times in the New Tes- 
tament, and it is translated uniformly in the 
Revision by the word " foreordain. " The New 
Testament uses it to predicate a fixed pre-de- 
termination on the part of God as to the or- 
dering of events and the final allotment of his 
people; and so, perhaps, the term " predesti- 
nated " employed here, and most frequently 
elsewhere, for it, by the Authorized Version, 
conveys the meaning more readily, on the 
whole, to the ordinary reader. Once, the word 
expresses God's Predetermining various things 
to come to pass in connection with the death 
of Christ. In the remaining five places in 
which it appears, it denotes the divine ap- 
pointment of God's chosen people to a glo- 
rious destiny. In these instances, respectively, 
it declares them to have been foreappointed to 
divine sonship, to brotherhood, and likeness to 
Christ, to future glory, and to be to the praise 
of the glory of his grace. Here it teaches 
that all whom God ''foreknew," that is, as we 
have seen, all whom he has eternally loved, 
chosen, and recognized and acknowledged as 
his own, are by him predestined to brotherly 
relations and likeness to Christ, his beloved 
Son, by all of which the gk>ry of Christ, the 
Elder Brother, will be eternally advanced, and 
the blessedness of his younger brethren, the 
redeemed from among men, will be eternally 
promoted. This high destiny awaits all the 
true people of God. The means for its attain- 
ment are as truly foreordained as the persons 

15 



2i8 THE FIVE-LINKED CHAIN. 

are predestinated, and the end predetermined. 

It is impossible that this sovereign and gra- 
cious decree of God should be frustrated or 
should in any way fail of final accomplish- 
ment, for he who is infinite in truth, in wis- 
dom, and in power, has sworn, " My counsel 
shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure/' a 

We come now to the third link in the chain 
of grace, represented by cKaAeo-ev, or " called. " 
The word Ka\ea> corresponds very closely, in 
ordinary parlance, to our English word "call," 
being used, as that is, to describe such acts as 
the giving or uttering of a name and the invit- 
ing or summoning of a person. Besides this, 
it is used in an efficient or causative sense, to 
which there is also some analogy in the use of 
the corresponding English word. In the Gos- 
pels it is sometimes, though rarely, used to 
denote the merely external call or invitation of 
the gospel. In the Epistles, however — and 
this is of the utmost doctrinal consequence — it 
is never so used. In them, when referring to 
the divine call of human souls, it is used inva- 
riably in the efficient or causative sense, and 
means inwardly, effectually, savingly called. 
It denotes the authority, energy, and efficacy, 
with which the Holy Spirit inwardly applies 
to human souls the outward call of the gospel, 
so as to result infallibly in their conversion to 
God, and in their translation out of the king- 
dom of darkness into the kingdom of God's 
dear Son. In the Epistles, the kXtjtol, or "the 

a Isa. 46 : 10 



GROUP OF PAULINE DOCTRINES, 



219 



called, " are widely distinguished from, and 
sharply contrasted with, those who have heard, 
but who have not accepted, the gospel invita- 
tion; as, for example, in 1 Cor. 1: 23, 24, where 
the apostle says, "We preach Christ crucified, 
unto Jews a stumblingblock, and unto Gentiles 
foolishness; but unto them that are called, 
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of 
God, and the wisdom of God." In the same 
strain, the true people of God are divinely 
addressed as distinctively the " called to be 
saints;" divinely declared to be " partakers of 
the heavenly calling;" and divinely exhorted 
to "walk worthily of the calling wherewith" 
they "were called." 

There is a beautiful and suggestive connec- 
tion between the terms, kXtjtol, or the " called," 
and iKKXrjaLa, or " the church," which deserves to 
be noticed, in passing. The KX-qroC, as we have 
seen, are the savingly called, the genuinely 
converted; the iKKkrjo-ta, on the other hand, is 
the legitimate and constitutional assembly of 
the savingly called — called out authoritatively 
from their old relations to the world into or- 
ganized unity, activity, and fellowship in the 
gospel. 

The calling of this passage, therefore, is an 
effectual calling — a calling from death to life, 
from darkness into light, and from the power 
of Satan unto God. 

The fourth link in the chain of grace, repre- 
sented by cSi/ccuWev, or justified, now claims our 
attention. The writer of the Epistle to the 



220 THE FIVE-LINKED CHAIN. 

Romans, though a Jew by extraction, is a 
Roman by citizenship, and he is versed in 
Roman law and polity. He writes an Epistle 
expository of Christianity to Roman citizens, 
who, by their peculiar legal and political train- 
ing, are specially capable of appreciating the 
meaning of words, the force of arguments, and 
the significance of analogies. In these circum- 
stances, as might be expected from his marvel- 
lous tact and skill, he treats his subject foren- 
sically, especially as this method is really the 
most germane to his subject, and so he employs 
technical legal terms, well known to hisread- 
ers, with which to set before them the central 
and fundamental truths of the gospel. The 
gospel truth which he most fully discusses is 
the cardinal doctrine of gratuitous justification 
by faith in the crucified Redeemer, and the 
term, therefore, which he employs to express it 
is one that is saturated with forensic meaning, 
inwrought with forensic associations, and prac- 
tically incapable of being employed in any 
other than a forensic sense. 

In the earlier part of the Epistle, the apostle 
proves that all men are under divine law, 
natural or revealed ; that all men are sinners — 
transgressors of the law ; and that all men, in 
their natural state, are therefore, actually, justly, 
and inevitably under its dread sentence of con- 
demnation. He then proceeds to show that by 
means of the gospel God can accomplish what 
he could not accomplish by means of the law; 
that through the instrumentality of the gospel 



GROUP OF PAULINE DOCTRINES. 2 2I 

he can do the very reverse of what he does, and 
must do, through the law without recourse to 
the gospel ; that is to say, he can and does 
justify, through the gospel, many whom, under 
the law, he inevitably condemned. 

To those w r ho lived under the scientific, rig- 
orous, and far-reaching Roman law, the term 
" justify" meant the act of a righteous judge 
toward accused persons proved innocent before 
him, in acquitting them and pronouncing them 
righteous ; and the term continues to this day 
to be so used in systems of jurisprudence de- 
rived from the legal system of ancient Rome. 
This term the apostle deliberately employs to 
express what God actually does to condemned 
sinners who receive the gospel : God acknowl- 
edges and declares them to be, and treats them 
as, righteous. Just here lay the profoundest 
problem of redemption ; and herein consists its 
mightiest achievement. How God could be 
just, and yet be the justifier of the unjust, none 
but himself could have devised. The gospel 
is his solution of the difficulty, and by it he is 
enabled both to be just and to justify every 
sinner who believes in Jesus. 

We are forcibly taught, by the apostle, that 
this gospel justification, so far as the divine 
conferring of it on men is concerned, is abso- 
lutely a justification "by grace," and that from 
the very nature of the case, by grace alone could 
it possibly be conferred. But by the same 
decisive authority we learn that, so far as the 
divine procuring of it is concerned, gospel jus- 



222 THE FIVE-LINKED CHAIN. 

tification is not a mere arbitrary transaction, 
but that it is a justification "by blood," by the 
infinite and vicarious sacrifice and satisfaction 
made for us by the God-man to the law and 
justice of God. Thus " grace " reigns " through 
righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus 
Christ our Lord." Without this stupendous 
and unique provision, it would be as impossible 
for God to justify a sinner as to forsake his 
justice, to deny himself, or to cease to be. 

The gospel is divinely declared to be "the 
power of God unto salvation to every one that 
believeth." But why? Because it reveals a 
divine righteousness receivable by faith ; not 
the righteosness of the divine character ; not a 
righteousness of divine requirements to be 
wrought out by every one for himself ; not even 
a righteousness to be infused into the soul by 
the Spirit of God, but a vicarious righteousness 
planned by the Divine Father in his eternal 
counsels, executed in the fulness of time by 
the incarnate Son in his fulfilling the precept 
and in his exhausting the penalty of the divine 
law ; revealed by the Holy Spirit in the gospel 
which he outbreathed, and freely imputed to 
the soul when effectually called by that Spirit 
into the exercise of living faith in Christ. 

As far as human instrumentality in bringing 
this grace-given and blood-bought justification 
into personal possession is concerned, the 
Scriptures declare with full-voiced emphasis 
that it is received only by faith in Christ. From 
the various and vivid inspired descriptions of 



GROUP OF PAULINE DOCTRINES. 



223 



this justifying faith, abounding in Scripture, it 
is evidently not merely intellectual or specula- 
tive, but pre-eminently affectionate, moral, and 
spiritual in its character ; and so also it is at 
once a first-fruit of the regenerating Spirit, a 
spiritual ingrafting into the living Christ, and 
the prolific germ and the generous nourisher 
of all other spiritual qualities and virtues. 

Justification being essentially, as we have 
seen, a judicial act of God respecting the per- 
sonal, juridical standing of believers before his 
law ; being completed instantly at the first ex- 
ercise of faith, and being of irrevocable and eter- 
nal validity, it is not to be confounded with for- 
giveness of sins, which, as distinguished from 
justification, is more properly a parental act of 
God, often repeated, often needing to be re- 
peated, toward those whom, for Christ's sake, 
he once and forever absolves from guilt, justi- 
fies, and adopts as his children. Much less is 
justification to be confounded with sanctifica- 
tion ; for while the former is the divine reversal 
of a sinner's legal state, the latter is the divine 
renewal of his spiritual nature ; while the former 
is grounded on the imputation of righteousness, 
the latter is the means of the impartation of 
righteousness, or holiness ; and while the 
former is complete at the first moment of con- 
version, the latter is progressive throughout 
the entire subsequent life. 

The fifth link — the final one in the chain of 
grace — represented by cSo^acrev, or " glorified, " re- 
mains to be considered. At first sight the term 



224 



THE FIVE-LINKED CHAIN. 



" glorify," like the term "glory," seems somewhat 
vague in meaning. Like the first great verb in 
our chain of five, this last, in the apostle's use 
of it, is somewhat Hebraized, as a moment's 
consideration of it will suffice to show. The 
radical meaning of kabod, the principal Hebrew 
word for glory, is weight, heaviness; and the 
chief of its derived meanings are riches, honor, 
majesty, and splendor ; so that it gives the con- 
ception of a person burdened and weighed 
down with opulence, splendor, honor, and dig- 
nity. Very prominent also in the Hebrew con- 
ception of glory is the element of brightness ; 
and thus, in his golden diction, Ezekiel speaks 
of "the brightness of the Lord's glory," or 
rather " the brightness of the glory of Jehovah." 
How natural it was, therefore, that the chief in- 
spired writer of the New Testament, when com- 
forting sorrow-laden Christians on earth with 
the prospect of their heavenly destiny, should 
speak of it as "a far more exceeding and eter- 
nal weight of glory ;" and that when exalting 
him who is at once the Jehovah of the Old 
Testament and the Jesus of the New, he should 
describe him as " the effulgence of " the Father's 
"glory." 

In the term " glorify," or " make glorious," the 
dual conceptions of weight and brightness, sub- 
stance and sheen, being constituents of the idea 
of glory, are present and predominant. The 
glorified are permeated with the bright essence 
and radiant with the bright effluence of infinite 
and eternal good. The glory of the redeemed 



GROUP OF PAULINE DOCTRINES. 



225 



is, in part, incipient during their earthly so- 
journ, though greatly shrouded and obscured ; 
but its fulness and effulgence are reserved for 
the heavenly state. Even in this present life, 
however, the believer is glorified with the glory 
of divine sonship, though still in minority ; 
with the glory of a regenerate and sanctified 
likeness to Christ, though yet incomplete and 
imperfect ; with the glory of an inner life and 
abiding fellowship with God, though often be- 
clouded and greatly circumscribed ; and thus 
is fulfilled, partly at least, the saying of the 
Saviour in his prayer to the Father, " The glory 
which thou gavest me I have given unto them." 
At the close of earthly existence, despite the 
sinister shadows of death, the believer is glori- 
fied in being borne by angels from the taber- 
nacle of clay to the heavenly mansion, from 
the grasp of the King of Terrors to the bosom 
of God, forever to abide in his love and in the 
light of his countenance. On his disentangle- 
ment from mortal life the believer's soul-like- 
ness to Christ will instantly become complete, 
and the spiritual glory of his character will then 
be ineffable. At the last day the Christian will 
be glorified in the resurrection of his body from 
the vile dust of death to immortality and like- 
ness to Christ's glorious body. Like some 
beauteous flower sprung from a seed that had 
shrivelled for ages in the cerements of a 
mummy, or like some insect that, having passed 
its unsightly rudimentary state, glances gaily 
in the sunbeams, all gleaming with crimson and 



226 THE FIVE-LINKED CHAIN. 

gold, the Christian's body will be raised in un- 
imagined glory, despite the dishonor in which 
it was sown. In soul and body, reunited and 
glorified, the redeemed will therefore be per- 
fectly conformed to the image of Christ; and 
through all eternity, amid the society and 
splendor, the pursuits and enjoyments, of the 
heavenly state, they will exult in the presence, 
the glory, and the favor of Christ, and " shine 
forth like the sun in the kingdom of their 
Father. " Doubtless the ultimate completion 
of the glorifying of believers in their heavenly 
state is the great strategic point directly and 
primarily indicated by this term of the apostle ; 
but it also evidently implies and presupposes 
the quickening and sanctifying processes pre- 
paratory to, and, indeed, initiatory of, the final 
consummation. 

Thus the great chain of grace, constituted, 
without one missing or faulty link, by divine 
foreknowledge, foreodination, calling, justifica- 
tion and glorification, unites the eternities of 
the past and future, unites the mighty truths 
of revelation, and makes doubly sure the assur- 
ance of the gospel's final success and of the 
believer's eternal salvation. 



II. 

DIVINE ESTIMATE OF THE PASTORAL 
OFFICE.* 

There are now current a variety of influences 
tending to depreciate the pastoral office in the 
minds of possible ministerial recruits, in the 
minds of ministers themselves, in the minds of 
Christian people generally, and in the minds of 
all sorts of people of the world. Among these 
unfavorable influences are the supreme impor- 
tance now commonly attached to wealth, the 
feverishly eager pursuit of it, characteristic of 
the time, the long and expensive period of 
preparatory study requisite for the best results 
of ministerial work, the general inadequacy of 
ministerial support, and the growing demand 
for highly sensational methods. In view of 
these things, and as far as may be to counter- 
act them, it would be well if the churches of 
Christ, if Christian young men, and if the minis- 
ters of the gospel would consider attentively 
the divine estimate of the pastoral office. 

I. The divine estimate of the pastoral office 
is indicated by the qualifications divinely pre- 
scribed for it. In various parts of the New Tes- 
tament, particularly in the " pastoral Epistles" 
to Timothy and Titus, there are summaries and 

* This discussion was published in the Baptist Quarterly 
Review, January, 1892, and it is here introduced by the 
author as a side-light on the pastoral office already consid- 
ered in Section II. of our ninth chapter. 

227 



228 DIVINE ESTIMATE 01 PASTORAL OFFICE. 

expositions of the rare combination of intellect- 
ual, moral, and spiritual qualities and attain- 
ments divinely required in those who enter the 
Christian ministry. These men must have certain 
natural and acquired abilities — capacity for 
study, aptness to teach, and talent for administra- 
tion and leadership. They must be men of strong 
and consistent Christian character; their minds 
must be well stored with divine truth; their 
souls must be rich in ripe Christian experience ; 
and their hearts must be filled with love and loy- 
alty to the Saviour, with love and devotion to the 
church, and with earnest and compassionate 
desire for the salvation of sinners. They must 
not be novices, " lest being puffed up," they 
" fall into the condemnation of the devil," but 
they must be men tried, and proved worthy of 
confidence, of esteem, and of the high trust to 
be committed to them; men " full of faith and 
of the Holy Spirit;" " faithful men, who shall 
be able to teach others also." They must be 
men called of God into this service by a spe- 
cial work of grace in their own hearts, and by 
the voice of God summoning them to the office 
through his people. Well might any man ex- 
claim, "Who is sufficient for these things?" 

2. The divine estimate of the pastoral office 
may be perceived in the functions divinely as- 
signed to it. The remarkable nomenclature 
employed by the Holy Spirit in speaking of 
the chief officer of a Scripturally-constituted 
church indicates unmistakably the variety and 
importance of the pastoral functions. The 



DIVINE ESTIMATE OF PASTORAL OFFICE. 



229 



Christian minister is commissioned as an " am- 
bassador" of Christ; and, " as though God were 
entreating" men by him, he is required to pro- 
claim the gospel message of reconciliation. 
He is sent of God, as a " preacher and teacher" 
of divine and saving truth. He is a " minister " 
or "servant" of Christ, and of the church for 
Christ's sake; but he is to serve the church, not 
as a menial or slave, but as an instructor, as a 
leader, as a presiding officer chosen by the church 
and appointed by Christ to act in these capaci- 
ties for the good of the church and the glory of 
the Lord. He is a "presbyter" or "elder," 
charged with the work of counselling and guid- 
ing the church. He is made by the Holy Spirit 
a " bishop " or " overseer " of the church placed 
under his personal and official care. He is the 
" pastor " or " shepherd " of the flock, the church 
of Christ, appointed to this office by Christ, the 
Chief Shepherd. He is the "angel" of the 
church, that is, the "angel" or "messenger" of 
God to declare to the church the word of God, 
and to watch and guard the vital interests of 
the church and of the truth, in the Saviour's 
name. 

The nurture, training, leading, and well-being 
of the church, and the conversion of sinners to 
Christ, are to be his constant care. Thus the 
functions of the pastoral office relate primarily 
and pre-eminently to supreme and eternal in- 
terests — the salvation of souls, the welfare of 
the church, and the glory of God. 

3. The divine estimate of the pastoral office 



230 



DIVINE ESTIMATE OF PASTORAL OFFICE. 



is evinced by the regards for it, divinely en- 
joined. Esteem, love, deference, gratitude, in- 
tercession, are prominent among the Christian 
regards to be exercised toward those who, in 
the name of Christ, minister in holy things. 

Upon this point, " What saith the Scripture? " 
" But we beseech you, brethren, to know them 
that labour among you, and are over you in the 
Lord, and admonish you ; and to esteem them 
exceeding highly in love for their works' sake." a 
11 Obey them that have the rule over you, and 
submit to them ; for they watch in behalf of 
your souls, as they that shall give account ; 
that they may do this with joy, and not with 
grief: for this were unprofitable for you. ,,b 
"Touch not mine anointed ones and do my proph- 
ets no harm." c "Let him that is taught in the 
word communicate unto him that teacheth in 
all good things." d " Brethren, pray for us," 
'- and on my behalf, that utterance may be given 
unto me in opening my mouth, to make known 
with boldness the mystery of the gospel." e 

Two opposite temptations are liable to befall 
the Christian minister in relation to these 
divinely enjoined regards on the part of his 
people for his office. One of these is arrogantly 
to claim these regards as a personal right, to 
use them for his own gratification, instead of 
receiving them humbly as a trust from Christ 
to be used exclusively for the good of the 
church itself and for the honor of the Master. 

a i Thess, 5 : 12. t> Heb. 13 : 17. c p s . 105: 15. 
d Gal. 6:6. e Eph. 6 : 19. 



DIVINE ESTIMATE OF PASTORAL OFFICE. 



231 



The other is to refuse such regards and weakly 
throw them away, either from timidity, false 
humility, or excessive and selfish desire to 
please men. 

But whatever the possible temptations in the 
case, it is strikingly significant that the divine 
word enjoins such regards for the pastoral 
office and its occupant. 

4. The divine estimate of the pastoral office 
is manifest from the responsibilities divinely 
imposed upon it. The pastor, in virtue of his 
office, is brought into specially grave and re- 
sponsible relations to the Judge of all ; and the 
Scriptures abound with solemn admonitions 
and warnings to pastors. Very awe-inspiring 
is the warning of Godto the divinely appointed 
spiritual watchman, whose business it is to hear 
the word at the lips of God and to warn men 
in his name: "When I say unto the wicked, 
O wicked man, thou shalt surely die, and thou 
dost not speak to warn the wicked from his 
way ; that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, 
but his blood will I require at thine hand." a 
Equally searching and solemn is the apostolic 
admonition to the minister of the word : " I 
charge thee in the sight of God, who quick- 
eneth all things, and of Christ Jesus, who 
before Pontius Pilate witnessed the good con- 
fession ; that thou keep the commandment, 
without spot, without reproach, until the appear- 
ing of our Lord Jesus Christ." b The Lord will 
reckon with his ministers for the many impor- 

a Ezek. 33 : 8. b 1 Tim. 6 : 13, 14. 



232 DIVINE ESTIMATE OF PASTORAL OFFICE, 

tant trusts he has committed to their charge ; 
and he will hold them responsible for the man- 
ner and spirit in which they have discharged 
the various functions of their office. Better, far 
better, for a minister, that he never were born 
than to be unfaithful and unworthy, and to ap- 
pear as such before the judgment-seat of Christ. 
5. The divine estimate of the pastoral office 
is evident from the final rewards to be divinely 
bestowed upon it. Notwithstanding the diffi- 
culties, trials, and anxieties peculiar to the 
work of the gospel ministry, there are in this 
life itself many great and precious spiritual re- 
wards for the faithful minister, in the character 
and privileges of the work, and in the special 
relationships of the pastor to Christ and to his 
true people. But the great rewards for the 
faithful discharge of this office are reserved for 
the future life. Near the close of the bright 
prophetic Book of Daniel we read: "They that 
be wise shall shine as the brightness of the fir- 
mament ; and they that turn many to righteous- 
ness as the stars forever and ever. ,,a In the 
address of Peter to the elders, Christian minis- 
ters who faithfully and lovingly fulfil the duties 
of their office are told, " When the chief Shepherd 
shall be manifested, ye shall receive the crown 
of glory that fadeth not away. ,,b It was pri- 
marily to the "anger' or pastor of a church 
that the glorified Redeemer said, " Be thou 
faithful unto death, and I will give thee the 
crown of life." c 

a Dan. 12 : 3. t> 1 Pet. 5:4. c Rev. 2 : 10. 

I? 



